


If I Could Fall Into the Sky

by PanBoleyn



Series: Between the Sand and Stone [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (some of the ableism is subconscious/unconscious), Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Amputation, But There Are Consequences, But They Are Bad At Showing It, Depression, Disabled Character, Eventual Happy Ending, Everyone Honestly Means Well, Injury Recovery, M/M, Magical Theory, Major Character Injury, Miscommunication: A Case Study, Permanent Injury, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Recovery, Suicidal Ideation, aborted suicide attempt, internalized ableism, look the story grew worldbuilding on its own
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2020-10-27 14:36:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 61,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20761973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: "Do you remember where you were burned?”“Julia, spit it out, please.”Julia does not spit it out, as it happens. What she does is help Quentin sit up so he can see his feet. Or, rather, his foot, because where the lower part of his left leg should be making a lump under the blankets, there is nothing at all.Quentin survives the blast in the Mirror Realm, but at the cost of half his leg. In the aftermath, he's sent off to recover, but the thing is, he's not sure if anyone is really going to want him to come back now. As for Eliot? Well, first he has to find out what actually even happened.But even once they straighten themselves out, the consequences of magic are more complicated than they expected.





	1. Till We Reach the Lowest Absolute

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! 
> 
> So, warnings for this chapter basically center around Quentin's mental state, which is only marginally better than canon in that he does not commit suicide here. Unfortunately, his friends continue to completely miss that he was spiraling in the first place, and are thus less helpful than they might have otherwise been. So on the whole there's a lot of self-loathing and assuming the worst-case scenarios from Quentin here wrt himself and his friends' intentions. There is also mild-self harm at the end of the chapter.
> 
> Minor warning also for mentions of the Monster and its habit of touching/cuddling Quentin.
> 
> As ever, all the love and thanks to my RAO enablers (and Maii especially for going over my drafts). Seriously, most of my Magicians fics would probably not exist without them.

Later, Quentin will realize he’s not even sure how he ended up going to the Seam. That Alice was going and they promised to be a team is definitely part of it, but that isn’t all of it. Not after they get Eliot back, after that one breath-stealing moment when foggy gold-hazel eyes shifted away from Margo to focus on Quentin, when - 

_ “Q… Q... gotta tell you…”  _

_ “Hey, don’t push it now, El. I’ll be back soon, we’ll talk then, I promise.” _

Even after that, Quentin goes because… There had been so much blood. So much blood, and Margo who has barely looked at Quentin since she got back. He can’t help feeling that his company, waiting for news, would be unwelcome. He can’t help feeling that he can’t be there if the worst - if Eliot - 

He will lose his mind if he’s there and that happens, he knows it. 

But the truth is, the real truth is that Quentin goes to the Seam because the bottle holding the Monster trembles faintly in his hands, and all Quentin can think of is holding himself still and shaking under the Monster’s touch. Under Eliot’s hands, stolen from him, touches meant to be affectionate that just made Quentin feel sick. Fingers squeezing around his throat, the crack of his arm as it broke, river dirt and rough stone under his hands to sink a body. 

The smell of blood and sugar and cinnamon when the Monster wrapped itself around him in his bed, or stroked his hair, or ran its stolen hands down his chest. 

Quentin goes to the Seam because now he’s the one holding the Monster captive, and he is damned well going to be the one to banish it to the void. 

And then he’s going to come back, and… Well. It occurs to him, as he and 23 follow Alice through the eerie grey corridors of a not-Brakebills, that he actually doesn’t know what comes next. Everything has been about saving Eliot, and then about saving Eliot and Julia. And now everyone’s alive, they’ve all made it through (everyone  _ has  _ to be alive) and… what next?

It doesn’t matter right now, he decides as they approach the room. Alice is nervous, hesitating at the door. “Even as a Niffin I knew better than to come here,” she says, but then seems to steady herself, straightening and pushing the door open. 

The mirror is covered, but when they pull off the cloth, it’s - actually, it’s kind of beautiful, Quentin thinks, staring at the whirl of stars beyond the glass. Later, he blames the strange slowness of the Mirror Realm itself, and the almost hypnotizing view of the Seam, for what happens next. 

Because what they should have done is toss the bottles the moment they arrived, and then got the hell out again. But they don’t, so Alice tosses the bottle with the Sister in and they watch it go, spinning away into the void. 

Quentin lifts the bottle with the Monster, feeling it shake harder in his hand like the Monster knows what’s coming. 

And then something hits the Seam-mirror, and it shatters. 

Everett. The Library dick who wants to be a god. Quentin doesn’t listen to most of what Everett is saying, something about being a more benevolent deity, even though for some reason the guy is addressing him. Maybe because he has the bottle. The only part that matters is - 

“Your friend Eliot is safe.” 

And, OK, maybe he’s lying. There’s every chance he is. But Quentin knows the second he hears the words that he has to make it back, has to know for himself, has to be there for Eliot when he wakes up.

That doesn’t mean Quentin can just hand over the bottle. Because if Everett takes the Monster, whatever he thinks of his power, Quentin is all but certain that Everett won’t win that battle for control. And a Monster with even more power than before, his Sister banished? Is going to come gunning right for them. 

No one Quentin loves is safe if this guy gets the bottle. 

Sunderland, when she taught them mending spells, mentioned that magical objects are harder to mend.  _ “And if they’re very powerful, you shouldn’t try it unless your discipline is mending, because the magic will fight you.” _

But Quentin’s discipline is Repair of Small Objects. And behind him, the Seam-mirror whispers of what it used to be, whispers that he can fix it. Just one easy tut, a simple curl of his fingers, and he can fix it. For once, he can do the necessary thing, it’s his magic that is the right fit for the job. 

There’s no time, no privacy to tell 23 and Alice his plan so he just flings the thought of it at 23 as hard as he can, while what he says out loud is, “Take her and go.” Alice is struggling every step of the way and oh, Quentin is going to pay for this later, he knows that. But he can’t be worried about anyone else, not when he knows what this is going to do, when he’s only going to have minutes at most.

23 and Alice clear the doorway. 

Behind his back, Quentin curls his fingers in a simple, easy tut. Margo showed him this one when she’d dropped her compact, he remembers. Such an easy spell. He can feel the Seam-mirror’s relief at coming back together, and -

“What did you do?” Everett demands. 

“Just a Minor Mending,” Quentin says, and he thinks he might actually be smiling as he turns on his heel, flinging the bottle away into the Seam. He wants to watch it go, part of him wants to stay here even as he sees the sparks beginning to spill from the mirror, the heat of them dangerously close. It would be easy, so easy to slip away, and he is so tired, and for half a moment he really does just stand there and think  _ I can be done, that’s all right _ \- 

But he watched Alice die once, he can’t do that to her. He didn’t even properly tell Julia goodbye. More than that, he made a promise. He told Eliot he was coming back. 

And so Quentin spins around again and runs like hell. A hand grabs for him but he ducks, escaping Everett’s grasp only seconds before the sparks take him - 

But the dodge sends him off balance, makes him have to stop for a moment so he doesn’t fall, and Quentin scrambles to keep going because he can’t afford the lost time -

He dives for the door and -

It feels like someone set his foot on fire, like they’re lighting sparklers down his back, and he  _ screams  _ -

The last thing he remembers is two pairs of hands grabbing his hands, his arms, before the pain is too much and he passes out.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin wakes up slowly, blinking at a white wall. Not an unfamiliar sight - is he inpatient again? No… no, he was at the Seam with Alice and 23, he cast a mending spell because… 

Oh. He’s in a regular hospital. Probably the Brakebills infirmary. He feels… sort of floaty, it’s nice, they must have him on the good stuff. He remembers burning, remembers… That must be why he’s on his stomach, he remembers burning lines down his back and… 

But it doesn’t hurt now, except. His leg, his lower left leg, it’s on fire, nothing else hurts but that, why didn’t the medicine work on -

Someone’s screaming. Is that him?

Footsteps. A prick in the side of his neck, such a small pain he shouldn’t feel it but its very mildness is what sets it apart - 

Darkness. 

<><><>

  
  


Julia is there when Quentin next wakes up, feeling vaguely achy but a lot more coherent. Also, he’s on his back now, which he thinks must be a good thing since he knows his back was burned. 

“Q? Hey, you with me?” Julia asks, taking his hand and leaning over him. She brushes hair out of his eyes and - oh, she looks worried. He’d better try and reassure her. 

“Hey Jules,” he tries to say, but the words come out as a croak thanks to his painfully dry throat. A moment later she has a straw at his lips. The water is warm but feels really good going down, and after a few long sips he’s more able to talk. “Hi,” he says again, his voice still rough but understandable now. “How long was I out?” 

“Three and a half days - Q, how much do you remember?” 

There’s something in Julia’s voice that Quentin doesn’t like, something he knows means something’s wrong. “Is Eliot all right? Did Alice and 23 make it out OK?” If Everett had lied, if Quentin had misjudged the distance for Alice and 23 to be safe… 

“Yeah, Alice and 23 didn’t get hurt at all, Eliot’s still unconscious but Lipson says he’s going to be just fine,” Julia says, squeezing Quentin’s hand. Her voice has softened but there’s still something wrong. “Quentin, how much do you remember?” she repeats.

“The sparks caught me,” Quentin says, rubbing his aching eyes. “Burned like hell, but I made it. I think Alice and 23 came in a little to grab me? Everett tried to stop me, I guess he figured if he was gonna die he was gonna take me with him?” 

“OK. Do you remember where you were burned?” 

This is getting annoying. “Julia, spit it out, please.” 

Julia does not spit it out, as it happens. What she does is help Quentin sit up so he can see his feet. Or, rather, his foot, because where the lower part of his left leg should be making a lump under the blankets, there is nothing at all. “Oh,” Quentin says faintly, closing his eyes as the world spins around him.

He doesn’t black out, though he kind of wishes he could. “Um - it was too badly burned?” he asks, fighting to keep his voice from shaking. 

“Q -” 

“Just tell me, Julia.” 

“No,” Julia says. “It - the magic disintegrated it. Q, if you’d been any slower -” She breaks off, cursing softly as if she realizes that’s a terrible thing to mention, but Quentin doesn’t actually care. _ If you’d been any slower,  _ ** _you _ ** _ would have disintegrated, _ is what she stopped herself from saying. Quentin remembers that moment when he’d stared at the cracks in the Seam-mirror, saw them seal over and then light up gold, when he’d almost chosen to just. Not move. 

He knows very well what would have happened if he’d been any slower. But, somehow, he hadn’t thought about what might be between dying and surviving unharmed. Somehow, it never occurred to him that he might come out alive but damaged. Should have thought of that one, clearly.

Quentin opens his eyes to find Julia meeting his eyes almost fixedly, like she doesn’t dare look anywhere else. It makes something go tight in the pit of his stomach, but he tries to ignore it. “Julia -?” 

His voice breaks, and the next thing he knows she’s pulled him into a tight hug. “Hey. Hey. Q, it’s going to be all right. We - we’ll figure this out.” 

“What’s to figure out?” Quentin asks, his voice muffled in Julia’s shoulder. “I don’t have a fucking leg, Julia.” 

“I know, but there’s - we’ll find you somewhere to go to heal and then, then we’ll figure it out. Lipson says there’s a magical clinic that’s really good with this stuff, you can head out there, we’ll work it out from there,” Julia says, stroking his hair, and it - 

He knows the whisper in the back of his mind that he’s being gotten rid of isn’t true, but it’s hard to ignore. After all, what good is he to anyone now? He doesn’t say that though, just lets himself be comforted by Julia’s hug. Because she’s trying to help him, he knows that she is. He’s not going to be a dick about that, even when it doesn’t really feel like help at all. 

A knock on the door has Julia letting him go and sitting back, both she and Quentin turning to see Dr. Lipson there. Quentin… has never quite known what to make of her, even when he’d managed to stop her from killing herself back when magic was gone. But right now, somehow it’s soothing when her voice is matter-of-fact as she explains what happened to him. 

“You’re very lucky to be alive. We were able to repair the damage to your skin and muscle - the haywire magic had eaten through your clothes and skin as well as melted some of the cloth to the wounds. Even after that - Alice Quinn tells me it was your own spell that caused this, that also released the stolen magic back into the ambient?” 

Quentin blinks. Say what? “Um… It was my spell, and the guy who was soaking up all the magic died in the blast, but I don’t…” 

“Magic’s back on with a vengeance, Q, only it came back a little weird. There’s these random surges,” Julia explains. 

“Yes, that. For two days, you had seizures every time there was a surge, but after that you stabilized - you were still too connected to what magic of yours was in the ambient, but it’s diluted enough now that you shouldn’t have any problems. You were also lucky with that wooden arm - I couldn’t have mended it, the magic in it would have fought me, but one of the people visiting for Alumni Week is a mender,” Lipson continues, and Quentin hadn’t even noticed his shoulder but there is a dull ache running down his arm from the shoulder. Not that his shoulder itself hurts at all.

His wooden shoulder has always been numb, but a cold sort of numbness. Now there’s a… warm edging to it, like the way your skin feels under hot water in that moment before you feel the heat. “My arm hurts,” he admits. “Like, an ache, nothing serious.”

“It probably will for a few more days, but can you move it normally? Your fingers?” Quentin tries, and finds that he can. Well, that’s something anyway, he’ll still have his magic. Such as it is. Lipson watches, eyes sharp, then nods.

“Good,” she says when Quentin looks back up at her, silent. “As to your leg, I have some suggestions for you, but I think that can wait until you’ve been awake longer than, what, fifteen minutes?” 

“Thank you,” Quentin says, and wonders if the two days of seizures are why he aches down to his bones, or if that’s just months of stress and fear and exhaustion catching up now that adrenaline and stubbornness have faded. He wonders if it even matters. 

Lipson leaves, and Julia squeezes Quentin’s hand. “It’s going to be OK,” she promises, and Quentin wishes more than anything that he could believe her. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Julia sits with him for part of every day, talking about this and that. She and 23 have invites back to Brakebills, she’s sure one could be available to him once he’s doing better. Quentin tries to think about that, tries to imagine Brakebills with Julia, but probably without Alice or Margo, without Eliot. He’s sure there were timelines where he barely knew any of them, just followed along at Julia’s side like he’d done all his life but he - 

Well, even leaving out the fact that he can’t follow anyone right now, he’s not sure if he could fall back into that. And maybe Julia doesn’t even want him to, but it’s - he doesn’t know how they fit together anymore outside of a crisis, not in the day-to-day. And he doesn’t know how to explain that, so he just shrugs when she talks about him coming back to school as well. “I think it’s too soon to plan for that, Julia,” he says. 

“I guess you’re right. But still, it’s something to think about when you’re ready.” 

He doesn’t want to tell her he’s not sure he ever will be ready. He doesn’t know how to explain that he - didn’t really expect to be here, at the end of it all. He’d sort of expected the Monster would kill him, or if it took a new body and let Eliot go, that it would kidnap him again. One way or another, he hadn’t thought he’d have to decide what comes next, and now… 

Well, the fact that he only has one leg is kind of overruling any other concerns. So he doesn’t know when or if he’ll be ready to think about carrying on with life.

More helpfully, Julia brings his long-neglected Kindle - couldn’t use it at Brakebills - so he can read or listen to audiobooks when he’s alone. Quentin isn’t quite sure why it works here when electronics are fiddly at best elsewhere on campus, but he guesses since the medical equipment is necessary there’s some kind of extra warding here to make sure it all works. 

He’s not complaining, anyway. 

He’s neglected his Audible account long enough that he’s built up a number of free book credits, so he spends a few hours finding new audiobooks to listen to. He can’t - even think about listening to the Fillory ones he already has, any more than he can think of reading them. Not now, not after everything that’s happened.  _ A Song of Ice and Fire _ is too damn bleak for his mood,  _ Harry Potte _ r reminds him too much of the jokes they’ve all made so many times. He buys some Star Wars ones but only gets through a chapter or two before the sound effects leave him too tense. 

A pity, really, but he thinks he’ll probably like them better in a different mood, so it’s not a waste.

Quentin next tries a series called  _ Circle of Magic _ on a whim, half thinking he probably won’t get through listening to these either, but the world is enough unlike this one or Fillory, the magic school and its students nothing at all like Brakebills - they’re kids, for one. They’re not bad, and after a while even soothing, and he likes how there’s different voices so the audio kind of sounds like a radio play. 

He listens to the adventures of magical children whose magic is actually good for more than chaos and he stares up at a white ceiling like so many other white ceilings, like so many other times. Only this time, what’s wrong with him can’t be denied by anyone, because it’s right there in front of everyone’s faces. 

At least the audiobooks mean he isn’t drifting in silence. 

Lipson is recommending a place called the Ravenwood Clinic. “Paula Ravenwood’s facility is for long-term treatment of magicians with all kinds of magic-related injuries, and she has several physical therapists on staff. They even make prosthetics, which you could use once you’re more recovered,” Lipson says. “We were at Brakebills at the same time, and I can guarantee she knows what she’s doing.”

The trick? The Ravenwood Clinic is in San Diego. Which is not a problem transportation-wise, because apparently one of the closets in the infirmary is actually a portal to this clinic, but… 

It’s funny, really. He’s been to other worlds, other  _ times  _ in other worlds even, but he’s never been to the West Coast. Never actually left the East Coast, even. Quentin doesn’t know how he feels about it. Part of him wants to go, thinks that maybe getting away from everything will be good for him for more reasons than one -  _ he knows how easy it would be to let his own magic burn him to ash if he just doesn’t move, as easy as it would have been to let the Monster choke the life from him with hands Quentin knows as well as his own _ \- but also… 

If he leaves, will he be able to come back? Will they even let him? Quentin can’t imagine why they would; his discipline isn’t battle-worthy usually, his magic’s middling at the best of times anyway, he’s a fucking useless mess, what was it 23 had said he was in that car analogy? 

_ “What was the one that would always explode?”  _

Neither Julia nor Kady had argued. Julia had agreed outright. And what could he say in his own defense, when mending discipline or not, his mother keeps being proved right about how he breaks things? He’d told the Monster as much, and it’s the truth, isn’t it? This time he’s broken himself, and shattered what little place he ever had in this group.

_ “Grow a pair of tits, Coldwater.” _

There’d been an edge to Margo’s teasing that hadn’t been there in a while, an impatience that - it’s stupid to be hurt by it. It is. Margo’d just had a whole deposition and quest in the desert, of course she hadn’t wanted to take another trip, of course she’d been infuriated by the continuing drama that was Quentin and Alice - 

A knock at the door pulls Quentin out of his thoughts, and he sits up when he sees Alice at the door. As if thinking about her had summoned her. Well. “Uh, hey,” he says, fumbling to pause his audiobook.

“Hi,” Alice says, sitting in the chair by his bed. Quentin watches her settle, or rather not settle, because she’s sitting rigidly in her chair, hands twisted in her lap. She meets his gaze and holds it so firmly that he can - he can feel how much she’s refusing to look down and he wants to yell,  _ Just look and get it over with! _ But that’s not fair. It’s not. He’s made her see enough, hasn’t he? 

“Alice -” Quentin doesn’t know what he’s going to say, which means it’s probably a good thing when Alice cuts him off. 

“I don’t think us getting back together is a good idea after all.” 

And, fuck, OK. It stings, but the truth is that the thing Quentin feels most of all is - relief. Which makes him feel like shit, but the problem with spending hours staring at the ceiling, even with the audiobooks, is that you can’t help but think. Quentin has been thinking a lot, maybe too much, and some of the conclusions he’s drawn are… not great. Still, he has to know - “Is it the leg?” 

“No, God,” Alice says. “Quentin, no. I wouldn’t do that to you. It’s - a lot of things. But mostly… You promised. You promised we’d do what needed doing together and the next thing I know you had 23  _ dragging me _ out of there.” 

“I know,” Quentin says, and he really wishes his hair was still long enough to hide behind but he supposes he owes it to Alice to meet her eyes. “I’m not - I’m glad that, that if someone had to get hurt because of my plan, it was me and not you, or even 23. But… I know it was out of line, to force the issue like that.” 

He’d like to leave it there. He really would. But he can’t. Not when there’s more to say. “I’m sorry, Alice. I should never have done that, but I also shouldn’t have - I love you. You mean a lot to me, But I, I think I got love and in love again confused. I - you -” He isn’t going to cry. He has no right to cry when he was the one in the wrong, again. “I was losing my mind, with - everything. And you were the only one who seemed to give a fuck. And I think I thought…” 

“That the only way I’d stick around was if we were dating again?” Alice asks, and her eyes are just a little too shiny too, her face pale but set. “I thought the only way you’d  _ want  _ me around was if we were dating, so we might have both made that mistake. But you weren’t thinking clearly - and I know you weren’t, because Lipson told Julia and me that even without what the sparks did to you, you were a mess - and maybe I wasn’t either. Because I already knew better.” 

Now he’s confused. “I don’t follow…” 

“I heard you in the Brakebills library, when 23 said you guys should just destroy Enyalius’ stone. I heard why you shot that plan down. The last time I heard you sound like that, you were talking about saving me. But what I want to know is - you have to know how you feel about him so why…?” 

He could play dumb, since Alice hasn’t named any names. But he won’t. After all, in conversations like this, with Alice, ‘him’ has always been Eliot, hasn’t it? Even after that mess after the threesome… Alice hadn’t been happy with any of them but when Niffin Alice wanted to throw it back in Quentin’s face, it had been Eliot she mentioned. First with the comment about the threesome and Quentin sucking Eliot’s dick, and then... _ _

_ “You think I didn’t notice when you weren’t looking at me, you were always watching him? And now look how you’ve hurt us both,” _ she’d whispered through his mind after the bank heist had gone so wrong. 

So no playing dumb. It would insult everyone involved, wouldn’t it?

“I wanted to want you. I thought I could again, that I could be that guy you were with again, that kissed you at South. The guy that past you thought I was. I don’t - you  _ wanted  _ me. Or at least thought you did enough to say yes when I asked, and you’re the only one who - and I thought I could feel the same if I wanted to badly enough.” Quentin shakes his head. “I don’t know, Alice. It - seemed to make sense then, but now I can’t follow my own logic and all I can see is that… I’ve hurt you again and I didn’t want to, I didn’t know I would but I should have.” 

Alice takes a deep breath, then another. “I’d love to be mad at you. I think I am, though I’m too glad you’re alive to really feel it yet.” she says. “I’m leaving, though. Zelda wants me to take over the Library, and reform it from within. I can’t do it alone, so I’m insisting that Kady be involved - I think it needs to be magicians, hedges, and Librarians all involved or whatever happens won’t stick.” 

Quentin nods. “OK, so… You came to say goodbye?” 

“For now,” Alice says. “When you’re back on your feet - I guess you’ll need a desk job, maybe you’ll come work with us.” 

_ I guess you’ll need a desk job. _ Well, if their little makeshift coven won’t have any use for him, maybe the new Library Alice wants to build will. Quentin supposes there are worse futures, even if the idea kind of makes him want to die. Lots of ideas make him want to die, to some degree or another. That’s no reason to dismiss them out of hand. “I am sorry, Alice,” Quentin says again, uselessly. “I really did - I really do miss you. I’m sorry I didn’t know what I wanted and fucked up with it. Again.”

“I know,” Alice says, her voice clipped. “So am I. But I missed you too, so -” She pulls a small, leather-bound book from her bag. “This is spelled, I have its match. We can write to each other. Maybe it’ll be easier to be friends from a distance for a while, until we’re both - clearer on what we want. Julia says you’re going to San Diego for rehab?” 

_ I haven’t decided yet, _ Quentin wants to say. But there’s no reason not to go, especially now that he and Alice are broken up again. He can’t imagine he’d be anything but an inconvenience at best, like this. “Yeah, I’m going to the clinic Lipson recommended,” he tells Alice instead. “It’ll be nice to have someone to write to.” 

Alice leaves him with an empty journal and an ache in his chest that’s all the worse for the relief that just won’t go away. It feels like a door slamming shut for good, and it’s for the best, he knows it is. But he can’t help but wish - wish he’d done something better, somewhere along the line, so that it didn’t all feel so cold. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Once Quentin tells Lipson that he’s going to go to the Ravenwood Clinic - “Your friend Miss Wicker thought it was a foregone conclusion, but I told her I had to hear it from you,” Lipson says, and Quentin says nothing - he could, theoretically, go right away. He’s been informed that he was, if not quite full-on malnourished or dehydrated when he came in, certainly headed that way, and his exhaustion levels have reached chronic. But he’s been in the infirmary for a week now and they’ve done all they can for him.

“I don’t know why you’re hesitating, Q? You shouldn’t be afraid of this, it’s the best thing for you. And after all, the sooner you go, the sooner you’ll recover and be able to come back,” Julia says, and Quentin nods and tries to smile, tells her that he knows that. Julia relaxes some when he smiles, when he says he knows this is the right choice and of course he wants to do what’s healthiest. 

Like she smiled at him after his third psychiatric stay, after - she found him, that time, he guesses he’ll never be able to make up for that, though she’s never said as much - after he’d said he was going to try and put away the fantasy, live in the real world. He’d tried, it hadn’t really worked.

He isn’t sure how to explain why he’s waiting.

The thing that’s stopping Quentin is that Eliot’s not awake yet. They actually have him in - it’s not an induced coma, more of a spelled sleep, but it’s because the Monster left him wrecked. Lipson won’t tell Quentin the details because the only medical proxy Eliot has on file is Margo, but he knows they’re repairing what they can in stages, and they don’t want to wake Eliot until magic and medical technology together has done all it can. 

Quentin knows most of this from Julia, who’s asked Margo for him, and a little from Margo who has stopped in to see him for like ten minutes at a stretch. But Lipson’s made it clear he needs to be discharged soon, so he finally makes his way to Eliot’s room. In a wheelchair, which is awkward, but he tries not to dwell on it. He does refuse to have Julia push him, even if he’s never navigated a wheelchair before and his steering is not ideal. Hopefully, he’ll be able to graduate at least to crutches before too long, and eventually to a prosthetic leg, but whatever he ends up doing, he’s going to have to do it without help. 

Might as well start as he means to go on, right?

So he wheels his slightly cockeyed way down two hallways to Eliot’s room, knocking on the open door. Margo, dozing in the chair by Eliot’s bed, comes awake with a jolt, squinting at the door. “Oh. Q. You’re up and about now, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Quentin says, and as he wheels into the room Margo’s gaze drops to the empty footrest on his wheelchair, the stump ending inches above it, and she can’t quite seem to stop looking there. She’s had the same problem when visiting him in his room, unable to stop glancing at the dip in the blanket where a lower leg and foot should be. He wonders if that’s better or worse than Alice and Julia pretending they don’t want to look by giving him such strong eye contact it feels like an attack sometimes. 

He misses long hair he could hide behind as a defense against just that, and curses Brian on a regular basis for cutting it off. 

But then he looks at Eliot and he stops caring what Margo is or isn’t staring at. Eliot looks… almost peaceful, like he’s just sleeping normally. Except he doesn’t. He doesn’t sleep like that, on his back with his arms at his sides. Eliot curls around a pillow or around the other person in bed with him when there is someone, or when he does sleep on his back he spreads out like he needs to take up all the space he can. 

Quentin used to watch him go from curled around a pillow to spread-eagled, on the garden bed they sometimes used, and he’d have to bite his lip so he didn’t laugh and wake him. Except that never happened, did it?

Maybe, maybe not, but Quentin saw it a time or two at Brakebills, before everything got messy and they were just friends who sometimes ended up crashed in each other’s rooms. So he knows, by any stretch. 

Still, Eliot looks better than he did. His still too long curls are clean, and he’s shaven - Margo’s probably doing that, there’s a spell for it and she knows as well if not better than Quentin that it’ll help Eliot when he wakes up to be as cleaned up as possible. Quentin can’t look away from Eliot’s still face, from how he’s too pale, his face gaunt from the Monster’s lack of regular interest in food or rest, but even in spelled sleep Quentin can somehow  _ see  _ that it’s Eliot in there again. 

“How’s he doing?” he asks, making himself look at Margo, who has stopped looking at his stump and is instead giving Quentin such a sharp look he once again curses Brian’s haircut choices.  _ Don’t ask me, _ he thinks desperately.  _ Please don’t ask me, I can’t tell you, I can never tell anyone. _

Eliot  _ doesn’t want him _ , and the only way Quentin knows to respect that is to never tell anyone how he feels, not now and not ever. To bite it back until it goes away or, more likely, just becomes part of him, so ingrained he doesn’t even consider mentioning it, because it’s just there. Or until he chokes on it, whichever comes first. 

It’s why even talking to Alice, who comes the closest to having a right to know some of this, Quentin had only admitted the mistakes he made with his feelings for her. He hadn’t denied what she’d said about his feelings for Eliot, but he hadn’t admitted anything either. Cutting it close, but the best he could do.

“Lipson looks at him with those damned glass pieces and does her spells, and the heart monitor’s steady, and they tell me that means he’s doing fine,” Margo says, and for a moment they’re close in a way they haven’t been in so long, because this fear, this worry, goes to the core of both of them. Maybe in another world, wanting to get Eliot back, waiting now for him to wake up, would have brought Quentin and Margo back together. Now, here, it’s just a fleeting kinship, there and gone again. “But I won’t believe he’s OK till he wakes up and looks at me.” 

Quentin can understand that. “I, uh, Julia said she told you -” 

“That you’re going to San Diego? Yeah, I’m a little surprised you’re still here. I mean, the sooner you go, the sooner you’re done and back where you belong, right?” 

“Julia had an idea for my timetable that wasn’t quite accurate,” Quentin says, which is kinder than saying  _ Julia decided I was going before I did _ . She’s trying to help, he might have wanted to be consulted a little more but he doesn’t need to be bitchy when she’s just trying to help. It is the sensible choice, after all, and he hasn't really been in a frame of mind to make good choices so it's probably for the best. “But I wanted… I told him I’d be here when he woke up, you know?” Not in those exact words, of course, but the same idea.

Only Margo, who he’d expected would understand, is frowning at him. “What?” he asks, wary. 

“Q…” Margo pauses, and when she starts talking again, her voice is unusually careful. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

What? “I… why wouldn’t it be?” 

“Don’t look at me like that -” 

“Like  _ what _ , Margo?” 

“Like I just punched you in the stomach. Look, Quentin…” Margo reaches for his hand. Quentin wants to pull away, but he doesn’t because what would be the point? He lets her squeeze his hand and let go. “You’re both going to need to heal. A lot. Don’t you think that might be harder if you’re also worrying about each other?” 

Well, no. He’d known he wouldn’t be able to stay the whole time but he’d thought - he’d thought they - “I thought we could help each other, before I had to leave at least, I didn’t think it’d be a distraction.” 

“Look, I know Eliot. He sees you like this he’s gonna freak, and worry about you, and not take care of himself like he should. And I’m pretty sure you’ll push yourself too far, too fast so he’ll stop worrying. Anyway, when we go back to Whitespire you won’t be able to come so -” 

_ Now _ Quentin feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. He doesn’t know why he’d assumed that Eliot’s being elected off his throne might mean he wouldn’t go back to Fillory, of course he would if Margo was there, and of course Margo isn’t going to let her deposition stand. Still, he, he knows he was a useless absentee king but - “Am I banished now?” 

“What? No, don’t be an idiot. Of course not. But do you really think you can navigate Whitespire on crutches? Or even a prosthetic leg before you get used to it? Hell, the bedroom you picked out and almost never used is  _ up a tower _ , Quentin.” Margo studies him, then softens a little. “Look. Go to California. It’s beautiful, you’ll like it. Get better. And then you can come and visit us.” 

_ Can I? _ Quentin wants to ask.  _ Or will you give me another reason why it’s not a good idea, because no one knows what to do with me now? _ Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe it’s not even - maybe Margo thinks Eliot is going to wake up and blame Quentin for the Monster, maybe she blames him and that’s why she’s been… distant with him. 

Maybe they should. All this happened because Eliot wanted to save him, after all. 

It doesn’t matter. Margo’s right, of course she is. Eliot is his friend, and for all he pretends not to care, for the people he does care about Eliot will do basically anything they need. If Eliot has Quentin around, like this, he’ll worry about him, try to help, and not heal properly himself. Quentin was stupid to think they could help each other - who is he going to help when he can’t even walk?

“You’re right,” he says, making himself smile. Margo’s eyes narrow like she doesn’t quite buy it, but after a moment she relaxes. She wants to believe it, he thinks. Everyone wants to believe he’s happy to be stashed away, he can give them that, can’t he? They mean well, he can be decent about it. “Can I… have a few minutes, though? I know he can’t hear me, but…” 

“What, you’ve got deep dark secrets I can’t hear?” Margo says, and she’s teasing but... 

She probably doesn’t think he has a right to ask her to leave Eliot. And maybe he doesn’t. But he’s going to ask for this much, because maybe he’ll never see Eliot again, maybe this is the last… So he’s going to ask for this much. “Please, Margo.” 

“OK, Q,” Margo says with a crease between her brows that usually means she’s worried, but why should she be worried about him? He’s doing the sensible thing and going away for everyone’s sake, what’s there to be worried about? She hugs him when she gets up and he hugs her back because that’s what people do, but he’s  _ tired _ . Last week, or whenever it was, when she strode in with those axes and a plan, he’d have given almost anything for her to hug him, to be worried about him. To say she knew how hard this had all been.

What’s the point now? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The door closes behind Margo, and Quentin reaches for Eliot’s hand, terrified it’s going to be cold. But it isn’t - if not for how Eliot’s fingers are limp in his it’s just like any other time they’ve held hands, a warm, slightly rough palm against Quentin’s own. For a moment just that overwhelms him and he lowers his head, pressing both their hands to his forehead and gritting his teeth until the tears stop trying to escape. 

Eliot can’t see him, but Margo could be back any minute, and there’s nothing to cry about now. Everyone lived, there’s no reason to cry. 

Quentin lifts his head, studying Eliot quietly. Even like this, so obviously still unwell, not even strong enough for them to wake him, he’s still so  _ much  _ \- Quentin’s heart still hurts looking at him, he still wants… everything. He’s tired of it, really, this constant wish for impossible things - he’s so tired of it he went and hurt Alice  _ yet again _ trying to escape it. He didn’t know consciously he was doing that, didn’t mean to, but he did.

At least if he’s not here to be faced with Eliot, the only one it will hurt is him. Which, really, it’s his stupid heart, no one else  _ should  _ be hurt by it. 

“I love you,” he says, and it feels like the words echo in the silent room. He thinks he sees Eliot’s eyes move under closed lids and for a moment he’s terrified of being heard. But there’s no other response, and so he takes a breath. “I love you, and I know you don’t - that I’m your friend and that’s all. And that’s… it’s enough, it’ll be more than enough, once I get myself together. If you still want that. If you don’t, if you blame me for all this, I understand, El.” 

He swallows hard. “I’m sorry I won’t be here when you wake up, I’m sorry I can’t keep my promise. But Margo’s right. I’d just be in your way while you try to heal, and that’s - it’s more important. I’m going to heal too, more or less, and I can visit then if you want. If you have time for an old school friend, fellow quester, whatever. You said you had to tell me something, you can tell me then.”

His eyes burn again. There’s _ nothing to cry about _ , this is so stupid. “So, so just. Don’t be stubborn, OK, I know how damned stubborn you can be, how many months did it take me to convince you to buy that cane? Remember, and then you kept leaving it on the floor and I’d trip on it? It took months for you to admit you needed it and you were mellowed out by then. So don’t be a stubborn ass, OK? Just do what they tell you, so you get better. I’ll try to do the same if you will.”

Eliot stirs a little, almost as if he can hear Quentin, murmuring nonsense. But he doesn’t wake up - of course he won’t, spelled sleeps mimic natural sleep in that it’s not always deep, but the magicked person won’t wake until it’s removed. But the little bit of movement sends a few curls tumbling over Eliot’s face and Quentin brushes them back with his free hand before he thinks better of it. Oh, his hands are shaking. 

He should go. 

Only, when he turns to leave, he can’t reach the door handle. His footrests are too long, he can’t wheel close enough to the door to open it. Quentin sits back in the chair and curls his hands into fists so tight his fingers ache. And a moment later, small sharp pains tell him his fingernails cut into his skin. He presses harder, because the pain keeps him from screaming his frustrations.

Julia and Lipson are right. He needs to go to the Ravenwood Clinic, and it needs to be as soon as possible. He can’t even get a fucking door open, what a goddamned joke. No wonder they’re all trying to get rid of him. And maybe Margo’s right too. Maybe he’ll like California. Maybe he’ll even stay. At least he’ll be out of everyone’s hair if he does, and that’s probably what everyone really needs from him. For him to be out of the way. 

He can give them that.


	2. You Can't Jump the Track

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Quentin works on his recovery and Eliot makes his way back to the waking world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! 
> 
> I have been doing some reading about post-amputation treatment, but artistic license and vagueness both definitely apply here, I freely admit it. If anyone has any tips on the subject, I welcome them!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include more references to the Monster being creepy (and that its interest in Quentin was unconsciously sexual/romantic) as well as description of past self-harm (cutting, specifically.) Quentin's mental state is still not good, but improving in this chapter.
> 
> As ever, thanks and love to my RAO enablers, especially Maii for looking over my drafts.

Well, it’s less depressing than the psychiatric hospitals Quentin’s been in. He’s always found that counterproductive, when he had enough energy to be a little shit about his mental commentary anyway. But still, the Ravenwood Clinic is a definite improvement. The walls are pale blue or green from what he’s seen, which is better than clinical white, and it doesn’t feel as cold, somehow.

This isn’t saying much, all in all, but it’s still a positive note, he tells himself. 

He’s so fucking tired.

Quentin sits in a wheelchair from the Brakebills infirmary and watches as Dr. Ravenwood looks down at his chart. “Well, you’ve been through the wars, haven’t you? What caused the broken arm? The notes here indicate it was broken and then magically healed, a little clumsily. Do you have lingering pain there?” 

“I haven’t noticed,” Quentin says, and thinks of a hand familiar as his own twisting in the air, then the crack and sickening pain of his bone breaking. For daring to ask the wrong thing. 

And yet. He would have preferred it break every bone in his body, if that meant it would have stopped cuddling him like a favorite teddy bear. Quentin decides he’d better not say that, though. There’s a window behind Dr. Ravenwood’s desk, opening out onto a courtyard that’s actually kind of pretty. Quentin stares at it - it’s a sunny day in San Diego, it had been raining at Brakebills - and says, “A Monster that had possessed a… friend of mine. It healed me later, I guess it wasn’t as good at healing as breaking.”

He can feel Dr. Ravenwood’s gaze on him steady and searching, and he remembers that Lipson warned him on his way out that Ravenwood’s discipline isn’t actually healing. Or, not physical. She’s a telepath who specialized in healing psychic damage at Brakebills, it’s her partner who is the physical healer. Paula Ravenwood is just better at running things than her wife, or something like that. Something about her unsettlingly pale grey eyes seems to suit the idea that she can see right through him.

_ Go ahead and look, I’m too tired to care anymore _ , Quentin thinks.  _ Break my bones and strangle me, read my mind, what the fuck ever, why should I care? _

“Well, you’re only twenty-six, that’s a reason to care.” 

“Is it?” Quentin challenges, and his palms sting when he clenches his fists, the little crescent cuts from his nails closed over but not healed yet.

“Your mundane records indicate that you’ve been on anti-depressant medications since you were sixteen. Why did you stop?” Dr. Ravenwood asks, voice level and calm. Quentin grits his teeth. 

“When I got to Brakebills, Dean Fogg said I wouldn’t need them. He said - he wanted me to give them to him. I thought it was a condition of my acceptance. Thing is, he - I thought it would all go away, just like he said. But it didn’t. It hasn’t.” Shit, why did he say that? He never told anyone he’d gone off his meds, it had never really occurred to him to do so. Except - well - in Fillory, in a life that never happened, but since there were no meds there anyway it seemed kind of pointless to bring up. 

“No, of course it wouldn’t,” Dr. Ravenwood says, and Quentin is surprised into looking back at her. What does she mean,  _ of course it wouldn’t _ ? 

“But -” 

“Mr. Coldwater - Quentin. Can I call you Quentin?” 

“Sure, why not.” 

“Quentin. Fogg told you that you didn’t need your meds, and I’m guessing you also got the talk from someone at Brakebills that magic comes from pain. This is true, to a degree. Pain - having experienced it - is what seems to open the door for magic, although the fact that it runs in families seems to indicate that once magic shows up, it sticks around. That or all magic handlers come from or are bad parents, but while that can be true, it’s unfair to assume something like that.” 

Quentin’s brain sticks a little on the term ‘magic handlers’, which he’s never heard before, and there’s a moment when the part of him that was once desperate to learn more and more about his new world flickers to life again. But it’s only a flicker, and gone again. “So what are you saying?” he asks, thinking of Eliot on the Cottage patio. 

_ “Magic doesn’t come from talent. It comes from pain,” _ he’d said.  _ “You are not alone here,” _ he’d said. 

And yet, somehow, here Quentin is. Alone. He should have known better, shouldn’t he? 

“I’m saying that you don’t have to be in pain constantly to do magic. I’m saying that other emotions can open the door, it’s just that pain is - it’s a bit like how, in extreme situations, adrenaline can allow people to do things like lift cars off a loved one. What I’m saying, above all, is that people like Dean Fogg and his predecessor Dean Seymour, who ran the school in my day, are wrong.” 

Dr. Ravenwood leans back in her chair, fiddling briefly with the end of her braid. Her hair is very red against her white coat. “They believe that without psych meds, students will tap into deeper reserves of magic. You’re far from the first Brakebills-trained student who’s come to us thinking that way, and the Canadian school goes through flares of this philosophy as well. It’s bullshit. And you’ll have it easier here if you’re not fighting your brain as much while you re-train your body. We can put you back on your meds.” 

“It won’t hurt my magic?” Quentin asks, because his magic, such as it is, is just about the only thing he’s got left. 

“Not at all. If anything, the opposite - you’ll be more clear-headed, which helps you be better at most things, magic included. We usually end up putting people on regimens of pharmaceuticals and potions - we find they work better in tandem. We can test a few combinations on you, see which has the best effect on you.” 

Quentin considers this. She probably has a point that this is going to be difficult enough, and given that right now he can’t give a single fuck about, well, anything… Maybe the others don’t want him back but he - if he is going to do this anyway, if he is going to try and be functional, he should do it right, shouldn’t he? In spite of it all? 

“Yeah, all right,” he says. It can’t make things worse, can it? Or, rather, it can, he’s had bad reactions to meds before, but in a long-term sense, it can’t. “Um, but I’m not really here for that, so…” 

“No, you’re not, though since you’re already here, why not do all we can for you? But you’re right. Do you intend to eventually use a prosthetic leg?” 

“Yeah, definitely,” Quentin says. He’s used crutches before, when he broke his leg in undergrad, and that had been… Well, once you got used to crutches it wasn’t so terrible, but even so he’d been relieved when he didn’t need them anymore. 

“We can provide that. Crutches and canes are easy enough to get through suppliers, for prosthetics we’ve learned to design them in-house - it’s a wonder what you can do with craft spells and a 3D printer,” Dr. Ravenwood says, and again Quentin feels a little interested, curious even. He doesn’t know much about the concept of combining magic and science, but it sounds like something that might be pretty interesting. He tests the thought, weighs it, and might even be glad when the curiosity doesn’t fade into numbness again. 

“However,” Dr. Ravenwood’s voice cuts into his thoughts. “It’s best to have crutches you can use long-term as well, in case there’s a problem with the prosthetic. Or a wheelchair -” 

“No, not a wheelchair,” Quentin says, maybe too quickly. “Crutches are, uh, fine. If I’m not supposed to wear the leg all the time. Uh… How do I… I don’t really have, I mean, I think I have health insurance, but…” 

Dr. Ravenwood shakes her head. “No, it doesn’t work like that. If a patient can, we might take things in trade - spells or information, that sort of thing, but in a lot of ways this place is like a safehouse.” She smiles, and it’s not exactly a pleasant smile, but Quentin doesn’t think the unpleasantness is really directed at him so it’s OK. “We’re magicians, resources aren’t the problem for us that they are for mundanes.” 

That… actually makes sense. Quentin sits up a little straighter. “This is… a lot to tell me, all at once,” he says. 

“Yes, but it caught your attention away from questioning why you should care, didn’t it?”

Oh, right. Telepath. Quentin should probably feel offended or something, but he doesn’t. He’s not exactly  _ pleased _ , but, well, she’s not wrong. As she explains how his therapy will focus on strength training at first, his upper body and his remaining leg, as well as preventing the muscles in his stump from atrophying too much, Quentin finds himself thinking of all the times he and his - and the others came together to discuss some new plan, against the Beast, for the bank heist, for the Quest. 

He tries not to think of their last ‘war council’, for dealing with the Monster.

But still, it’s not unfamiliar, to focus on logistics instead of the dark knotted thoughts in his head. It’s probably not ideal, either, but at this point, Quentin will take what he can get. 

He lets himself be wheeled to his room from Ravenwood’s office only because there are other people in the halls, and he doesn’t want to run anyone over. His steering is still shit. The room is small, a hospital-type bed and small chest of drawers, one of those wheeled table things every medical facility he’s ever seen seems to have somewhere. 

They leave him by the window, where he finds that he has a view of the San Diego skyline. Which, hey, at least it’s something new. No point in going across the country from everyone you know if you can’t even see something new, right?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The best thing about physical therapy is that it often leaves him tired enough to sleep through the night without too many nightmares. Quentin can’t take sleeping pills - he found out as a teenager that they trigger night terrors in him. He also can’t take sleeping potions, because they make him sleepwalk. He woke up more than once to find himself in random places in the Cottage - the last time, he ended up on Eliot’s floor, which had been… an interesting conversation the next morning. 

Although, much better than if he’d ended up in the room of someone who didn’t like him. 

Sleep  _ spells  _ work, but they’re only for emergencies. So Quentin has long since resigned himself to bouts of insomnia, and usually he doesn’t mind too much. Unlike most parts of his depression or anxiety, while it sucks to feel tired all the time he’s also learned to enjoy the quiet hours deep in the night. Might as well, he’s stuck with them a few times a month at least anyway.

He doesn’t mind when he can’t sleep. He does mind the nightmares, though. And those, well. Those do keep happening. Gasping awake in the dark from dreams of a burning room made of mirrors, the Monster reaching out from the Seam to pull him in, dreams of the Monster, still in Eliot’s body, finding him again and again no matter how far he runs - 

Well. There’s a reason Quentin is glad to be too tired to dream, as days blend together until he’s been here two weeks and counting.

“You really should speak with Dr. Barlow,” David advises during one session, and Quentin sighs, taking a drink from his water bottle. His exercises are progressing well enough - he can do three circuits of the room on crutches, though only one on the forearm crutches he’s decided he prefers for long-term use. He can also get himself into the bathroom and onto the chair in the shower, and he was more or less able to put his clothes away. Quentin’s sort of always known that these things make him feel more human, because they’re all things that become hard as fuck to do when his depression is at its worst, but the feeling is stronger this time. Maybe because usually he feels pathetic for having been unable to, and this time, well… 

Experts whose job it is to judge what people are capable of tell him it’s an accomplishment for this stage of his recovery, and somehow that helps. He figures they’d know better than he would, so.

They won’t let him try even the temporary prosthetics until his strength is up a bit more, which is his own fault for barely eating or sleeping in months. Although the Monster did have a habit of startling him into dropping food when he actually tried to eat, so maybe it’s not entirely his fault. It still mostly is, anyway.

“I have shitty luck with therapists,” he says. “Well, shrinks, not your kind of therapy.”

“Even so, it can help.” 

“I’ll think about it,” Quentin says with a sigh. It’s true, actually, that he likes David. David’s only a few years older than Quentin himself, with ever-amused black eyes and an easygoing manner that comes up against Quentin’s darker moods without wavering. And they’ve liked enough of the same things that there’s always something to talk about during his sessions. Which, you know, debating the finer points of  _ Star Wars _ or _ Lord of the Rings _ only goes so far when he’s mid-routine, but it’s distracting. 

And it keeps him from getting as frustrated when he falls over trying to open a cabinet because he lost his grip on a crutch. He definitely prefers the physical therapy to occupational - physical is more like he assumes going to a gym would be like, just exercises, while occupational is about being able to do shit. Quentin’s ability to do shit is, like, fifty-fifty at best. The putting his clothes away mostly consisted of nudging a chair over to the drawers and managing to sit down in it to open the drawers and his suitcase.

At which point he’d discovered Julia did that spell that makes things bigger on the inside - a TARDIS spell, he’d called it, even if it was really more Bag of Holding, back in first year when things were easy - and almost all his stuff was in there. Probably meant as a kindness, but it hadn’t really helped the whole _ I’m here so they can get rid of me _ theory.

He’d put his clothes away and tried not to think about it. Anyway, he’s not going to complain about having his books, the few non-Fillory ones he’d had with him at Brakebills. Julia didn’t pack the Fillory ones, either out of old habit of trying to get him to break his fixation or an understanding that they aren’t so comforting anymore. He’s not sure. 

While David does a thing with Quentin’s stump that’s supposed to keep the muscles from atrophying - it involves what feels like a massage and also magic that seems to tingle through his veins - Quentin lies on the padded bench and thinks that when he’s back in his room he’ll reread  _ The Hero and the Crown _ , instead of playing the  _ Street Magic _ audiobook. He thinks of that, and not the idea of going to therapy - the kind he’s used to - or what it meant that Julia gave him all his things. 

He could ask her - she said she’d call once a week, she’s already called once, but they had almost nothing to say. And, honestly, he doesn’t want to ask her yet.

He’ll have to think about these things eventually, of course. But if one step at a time can apply to his physical recovery, can’t he just let it apply to everything?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot almost regrets waking up, honestly. 

Well, no, that is not true, because not waking up would mean being dead, and these days at least he very much wants to live. He has things to do, dying now would be inconvenient as fuck. But he still kind of does have to regret waking up like this, because  _ absolutely everything _ hurts. It’s all the worse for not being a sharp pain so much as a low-level throb like he’d stubbed his toe, except his toe is his whole body. 

He sounds like Quentin. That’s what fifty years together and presumably some kind of medical drug cocktail will do to a man. But that’s all right, he can sound like Q in the privacy of his own mind. But he’d rather listen to Q rambling again than do it himself, which is why he forces his heavy eyes open. 

“Eliot? Oh thank fuck, I was starting to think they’d screwed this up.” 

“Bambi…” Eliot murmurs, his voice a hoarse croak. “Bambi… Q?” He needs them both, but he only feels Margo’s familiar hand in his. Her hands are so much smaller than you’d think, the force of her all the more concentrated for being in a smaller body, he thinks. Quentin’s are the opposite, bigger than you'd think, but no one is holding Eliot’s other hand.

Margo isn’t answering him. Eliot blinks at the blurry outline that is her leaning over him once, twice, and he slips under again. But this time the dark isn’t welcoming, or quiet, because Margo didn’t answer him and he’s scared. 

_ Quentin? Where are you? _

But of course there’s no answer from the depths of his own mind.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


So David, it turns out, is one persistent motherfucker, and also good at waiting people out, which is honestly unfair. “You try sitting for this many tattoos and you’d learn patience under pressure too,” he says, and OK that’s fair. David has these elaborate vines wrapping up his arms, and scattered around them are hedge stars, the blue of them and the green of the vines bright against his dark skin. He has others too, apparently, hidden under his clothes. 

One of the other patients, a woman who does outpatient sessions, has tattoo-like designs painted on her prosthetic, and a whole sleeve of them on one arm. Her name is Aubrey, and she told Quentin why in a moment of downtime. “I can’t control what people think when they see the leg, but I can control everything else.” The idea makes him think of Eliot, of his carefully designed appearance, how he basically turned himself into living art for the same idea - control what everyone sees. 

David, though, just likes them. And, apparently, learned patience with them. He brings up a visit to Dr. Barlow once a day, every day, mild and casual, until Quentin finally sighs. “OK, fine. Why the fuck not.” 

A moment later, he thinks that he really, really wants to strike that phrase from his vocabulary forever. 

Which is how, a day after that, he finds himself sitting across from yet another therapist. The kind he knows too well, this time. It’s the usual intake interview, the questions about his meds, so on and so forth. Dr. Barlow isn’t so bad, and she doesn’t seem to get frustrated when he isn’t exactly opening up at first. She lets him talk about his other therapy sessions, or about the books he’s reading in his room, and even though Quentin’s been to enough therapy to know she’s waiting him out, somehow she makes it feel like she’s not. 

It makes him relax, a little, in spite of himself.

“I kind of want to punch Dean Fogg, actually,” is the first thing Quentin says that’s more personal, when he arrives for his third visit. Dr. Barlow, an older woman who kinda reminds him a little of Julia - it’s the coloring, he thinks, soft brown hair and intelligent brown eyes - raises her eyebrows. 

“Why is that?” 

Quentin shrugs. “I mean. I still feel like shit, but, like, I actually feel it, now. And I know that’s - better, than before. Also, I tried a few Poppers yesterday and they’re already easier. So I’m kinda pissed.” 

“Yes, I hear that a lot. Is there anything else you want to talk about?” Dr. Barlow prompts, and Quentin sighs. 

_ I think my friends want me gone, _ he thinks. _ I’m in love with one of my best friends, but he only wants me when there’s no choice, and it still feels like he divorced me out of the blue after fifty years and what do I do when no one I care about fucking wants me around? _ But he doesn’t say that. He can’t say that. 

“I don’t know what I do, when this is over,” he says, looking down at his lap, at his left leg that ends just below the knee. He thinks of cracks sealing over and then lighting up gold, a field of swirling stars beyond them. Thinks of gold sparks in the air, and how easy it would have been to just let them swallow him up. 

But he’s been to the Underworld before. He doesn’t - he’s tired. He’s so fucking tired. Even now. But he doesn’t want to go back to the Underworld just yet. Not yet. Even if he has no idea what’s left for him here. 

“I don’t know what I do, but I’m - I want to know. I want to  _ be here _ , to know, and that’s, um. I haven’t, haven’t felt like that in. In a while.” He clenches his fists so tight his knuckles ache, but he doesn’t let his nails break the skin. One step at a time, they keep telling him. He wants to apply that to everything, he keeps telling himself. 

It’s like a quest. To get better, and figure out who he is now. That’s… He knows how to do a quest, now. In theory and in practice. He knows now that they aren’t like the stories, that they don’t fix everything. But it’s something he understands, it’s something he knows he’s  _ capable  _ of doing. Sometimes, on a quest, you have to tell your story to move forward.

“So, here’s the thing,” he says, and he didn’t exactly  _ plan  _ to dump four years (and fifty) on Dr. Barlow in one session, but that’s kind of what happens. He realizes when he gets to the part where he’d woken up without a leg that he’s crying, and has been for a while. 

(Thinking back a little hazily, he thinks the tears started somewhere between Alice hating him for bringing her back and realizing that magic being gone meant he might never see Eliot again. Which, really, is a cross-section of, like, half his problems.)

He stops talking then, and drinks down two little paper cups of water that Dr. Barlow hands him. His head aches, but he feels… less heavy, somehow. “It’s been a long few years,” he finally says, voice hoarse as he swipes the tear tracks off his face. 

“Yes, I can see that. I have to say, that while this is certainly not the preferred way to take some downtime, maybe you needed to be away from that for a while.” 

Quentin blinks - and then to his surprise, he actually laughs. It’s a rough, almost painful sound, but it’s real. “Maybe I did. But I still want to go back, once I’m better. Is that stupid?”

“No. They’re your friends, of course it isn’t.” 

_ But if they don’t want me there? _ But Quentin still can’t force those words out, it seems. Just the idea makes him feel like he’s choking. And he knows what that feels like, doesn’t he? “I don’t know what good I’ll be to them, but I want to.” 

“You’re more than your usefulness, Quentin,” Dr. Barlow says gently. “I understand why you think otherwise, given the time you’ve had. But it’s something you might want to think about.” 

Quentin isn’t sure that he wants to think about it, honestly. Being able to contribute to the group has been the only relevant thing for so long, getting through the latest crisis has been the only goal. He doesn’t - 

“I don’t know who I am without a goal anymore,” he says, staring at his hands. He remembers when his left hand bore a ring, the first one smooth plain copper, the second one engraved. When chalk dust covered his hands on a daily basis. “Even in, in the best life I ever had, we had, um. A job. A goal. I don’t - who am I without that?” 

“Well, for now, you  _ do  _ have a goal. Your recovery,” Dr. Barlow says gently. “But it’s still not who you are. That sounds like something we’ll have to continue discussing. And you should think about it on your own time. Write things down, if that helps.” 

Quentin doesn’t see how any of this could possibly help, but sure. Why not. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It takes a while, for Eliot to be awake more than he’s asleep. He tries, he tries so hard, because he wants to be awake. It hurts, but the hurt at least tells him this is real, tells him that he’s alone in his body once more, and in control of it. Or, not in control, not yet, but only in the sense that he’s too worn out to do much. 

He’s not a puppet anymore, and that’s the most important thing. Or, one of the most important things. 

Margo is always there, when Eliot surfaces. Once or twice he hears other voices - Lipson, he thinks, maybe Fen, once or twice? It warms a part of him, that she came to see him, but he can’t muster the energy to wake up properly for her. Once he hears Margo yelling at Josh Hoberman of all people, and he opens one eye just enough to see Hoberman walk out of the room, shutting the door with a slam behind him. Eliot kind of wants to hex him for that, because the slam sends waves of pain through his pounding head. 

Once, Julia Wicker of all people is there, talking to Margo in a low voice so that Eliot can’t hear her. Eliot really struggles to stay awake then, because Julia - Julia was with Quentin, and Margo won’t tell him anything about Quentin. And he’s not here, he’s never here, where is he? 

Eliot’s dreams don’t have an answer, not exactly, but they tell him things he never wanted to know. He dreams of Quentin, mostly. Quentin covered in blood, his scream as the thing riding Eliot breaks his arm with a casual twist of his hand. 

As casual as the gesture that sent Quentin flying into the wall. 

_ “That’s cute. But I’m strong, and you’re weak.”  _

_ “Break my bones and strangle me. Too tired to care anymore. You hurt him, you take one more pill, and you can build your body on your own.”  _

Quentin’s eyes, dark and angry and empty. Eliot’s seen that emptiness before, or something near enough like it that even in this hazy dream it terrifies him. Because he learned to recognize it the night he found Quentin with a knife in his hands, thin lines already spilling red over his skin. 

Eliot dreams, and his hands are around Quentin’s throat, his body is wrapped around him at night, he can feel how Quentin holds himself still against the Monster’s clinging, its wandering touches, its - 

They’re by a river, a body sinking under the water, when it pulls Quentin in close, nosing along his throat, his jaw. Eliot, in the dream, feels the Monster  _ wanting _ , but not understanding - but  _ he  _ understands, and the sheer horror of it - 

But then, Sister, and even Quentin means much less in the face of getting her back. 

Eliot wakes up, finally, blinking against the fluorescent light, weak like after that fever that nearly killed him one year at the Mosaic. Weak, but coherent. He can tell he isn’t going to slip under again, and he takes a few deep breaths, reorienting himself to the waking world, to reality. Margo is there, as she’s always been, smoothing his hair out of his face, helping him to sit up and drink some water cooled by her magic. 

Margo is here, but Quentin isn’t. “Where’s Q?” he asks, and he sees the flicker of hurt in Margo’s eyes that it’s the first thing he asks, but… “Bambi, you know I’m glad to see you, but I’ve been in and out… How long?” 

“Over a week since they woke you up,” Margo says. “You - you took a bad turn, picked up a fever somehow…” 

“Over a week,” Eliot says. “And you’ve been here every time I surfaced, there’ve been other people, I sort of knew they were there, but not Q. So, where is he?” 

Margo hesitates, and Eliot panics. “Tell me he’s not -” He can’t even say it, can barely think -  _ tell me he’s not dead, please don’t let him be dead.  _ Eliot won’t - his sanity won’t survive that, he feels sure of it. Not now, especially.  _ Know that when I’m braver, it’s because I learned it from you. _

“Hey, no, calm down, he’s all right,” Margo says quickly. “Well… more or less. He’s just not here - he went away to an inpatient clinic for therapy, but he’s all right, you’ll be able to see him once he gets back. I promised he’d have time to see you after, OK?” 

Eliot thinks of Quentin’s empty eyes in his dreams. Dreams he suspects are memories. The Monster tortured him, with Eliot’s hands and Eliot’s body. And now Margo’s telling him Quentin’s inpatient again? Quentin is terrified of inpatient care, has been ever since Julia’s stunt with the Scarlotti Web. They were thirty years on the Mosaic and he’d still wake up trembling from nightmares about it. 

For Quentin to be back on the locked ward he - he either scared himself or scared someone else, probably Margo or Julia, maybe Alice, enough to be talked into it. 

Eliot stares at his hands, lying against the white hospital blanket and looking almost harmless. But they haven’t been harmless in a long time. Overlaid over them, he sees his fingers wrapped around Quentin’s throat. And he knows he can’t ask to see Q, not now. He can’t do anything but hurt him, right now. Because if he’s back in a facility, he must be a mess. What if he - if he attempted again, what if - 

And what can Eliot be for him, at a time like this, but a trigger? 

So Eliot nods, and doesn’t ask Margo any questions. He lets her fill him in on what he’s missed, as the days pass and he gets used to walking with a cane. Lipson gave him a standard cane but he changes it almost immediately, to a familiar black cane with a silver ram’s head handle. 

“Nice,” Margo says. “Where’d you come up with that?” 

Eliot thinks of the harvest fair, Quentin pestering him until he finally bought a cane. “Saw it somewhere,” he tells Margo, because he isn’t ready to talk about that life with anyone but Quentin. Not yet. 

He’s determined to recover as quickly as he can, so he actually obeys Lipson’s orders, just this once. He takes it easy, he does the exercises she advises - she’s no physical therapist, but she consulted with someone called Ravenwood, apparently - and finally he’s cleared to leave. Margo takes him back to Kady’s safehouse apartment and Eliot… 

Doesn’t want to be here. Has too many memories of the Monster and Quentin here. But it’s where they’re all based for now, so he hasn’t got a choice. Or, well, Kady and 23 and Margo are based here. Julia’s gone haring off on a quest to restore her magic, and Alice is apparently running the Library now. 

And Quentin is in a clinic.

Margo helps Eliot fix his hair, and use tailoring spells to make his clothes fit again. He rebuilds himself day by day, and hopes that if he can banish all traces of the Monster from himself, then he can go see Quentin. 

They can finish healing together, Eliot hopes. But he has to make sure he won't hurt Q, just by being there, first. It's why he doesn't demand to know exactly where he is, if the clinic is near the apartment or somewhere else in the city, or if he can call him. Because he doesn't know if it's safe yet, and he doesn't trust himself to resist if he knows how to reach out. 

It won't be forever, right?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The problem, after the first few weeks, is that Quentin doesn’t feel real, here. His days have a routine and he already knows that’s good for him, but it’s not a… not a life routine. It’s a recovery routine, in a city he’s never been to that he sees only through the windows of the clinic. It’s not that he wants to go exploring - the very thought is still exhausting, and also he’d need to take the wheelchair, which, just no. It’s just that he feels unreal. 

So, when he orders a journal online to follow Dr. Barlow’s advice, or at least try to, he also orders a few sketchbooks, charcoal sticks, and oil pastels. When he was a kid, he liked colored pencils, and Brian had a selection of pencils and fine-tipped black pens he used for his sketches, ink over pencil so they’d last. 

As a kid, drawing had just been fun. As Brian, it had been the only thing that kept him from being mind-numbingly bored. And - well. At the Mosaic it had been necessary, the only way to keep track of their designs, but teaching Teddy to draw is also one of Quentin’s more vivid memories. They’ve faded, a lot of them, gone soft-edged and jumbled in terms of what happened when. He guesses that’s because a mind can only store so much. But that’s one of the clear ones. 

This time, Quentin draws to remember, and to force himself to look at the world again. After his sessions, he goes back to his room and tries to draw David, or one of the other patients - though, because he feels a little bit bad about this, he blurs their faces, charcoal dust smeared on the pad of his thumb. It occurs to him that this might be ‘art therapy’ like his least favorite former therapist had suggested, but it’s different when it’s an idea he came up with himself. 

Being  _ forced  _ to it by said former therapist is why, at sixteen, all of Quentin’s art supplies had gone in the trash. Most of the pencils had been snapped in half, also. It hadn’t exactly been his finest moment, but what can you do. He’d been furious, to find that something he used to love had been turned into a  _ chore _ , like… like cleaning the bathroom - he hates the smell of bleach, it gives him headaches. He’d hated it more as a teenager.

And yet, while Quentin draws his daily life, trying to feel real, he falls in love with art itself again. It’s not like his older uncomplicated love for the Fillory books, or the less… obsessive comfort he finds in the Circle books now, or in rereading the Damar ones he found at a used bookstore years ago. In a way, it almost feels like card tricks, card magic - not something that lives in his very core like mending or being in love with Eliot, but something he knows he can do, something where his hands are steady and he doesn’t trip over his thoughts or his tongue.

At first, little sketches are also almost the only thing he puts in the magicked journal Alice gave him. He - he doesn’t know what to say to her, and so he gives her little drawings instead. They’re off a bit, because by necessity he has to use a pen for them, but he shows her the San Diego skyline from his window, or the pattern of David’s tattoos. Or little scenes from the books he’s reading. 

**One of my sketchbooks is just for drawing book scenes,** he confides, and it’s the first personal thing he’s felt free to tell her. He’s kept her updated on his progress, because she asks, and she’s ranted a little about the Librarians who don’t want to reform, but this is - new, for him. 

** _Do you draw any of us?_ ** Alice writes back. 

**Not yet. I haven’t tried drawing memories yet. **

** _We’re not memories, Q. You know that, right? It’s not like you’re never coming back._ **

It’s nice of Alice to think so, and Quentin knows she means it. After all, she’s the one who offered him a place after he’s recovered. He doesn’t want to work for the Library, but that hardly means he can’t appreciate the gesture.  **But right now, I’d be drawing you all from memory, and I haven’t tried yet.**

** _Quentin, how are you? Really?_ **

Uh-oh. He and Alice have always been messy, they’ve never quite understood each other the way they wanted to, but there are times when one of them gets a moment of absolute clarity. Quentin isn’t sure he can bear being seen with absolute clarity just yet. But he wants - he wants to tell her something. And so - 

**I’m in therapy too. Like, a psychologist. And I’m back on my meds. Fogg told me to stop, the day of the entrance exam, he said with magic I wouldn’t need them, I should never have listened -**

** _Quentin, what the hell? Any of us could have told you differently, why didn’t you ask?_ ** And Alice’s familiar neat script is not as neat as it usually is, the words scrawled in a hurry and cutting him off. 

**They told me a lot of Brakebills grads fall for it. But I’m doing better, Alice, really. I just wish Julia hadn’t left New York.**

** _Julia left New York?_ **

**Yeah, she’s tracking down leads to get her magic back. Last time she called me, she was in London, there’s this bookshop with really weird hours but the owner has all kinds of esoteric books, she’s looking for something there. Didn’t say what exactly.**

** _Is she going to come visit you? _ **

**I don’t know.** And Quentin isn’t sure he wants her to, though he doesn’t say that.

** _Has anyone come to see you? What about Eliot?_ **

_ Oh. _ Quentin sets his pen down and has to just breathe, for a long moment. ** I don’t know if he’s up to it yet. I forgot to get Margo’s new cell phone number, so last I heard was from Julia before she left. They were only just waking him up.**

** _Do you want me to see what I can find out for you?_ ** Alice writes, and Quentin’s breath catches in his throat. Because, yes, more than anything, but he remembers what Margo said, that they might distract each other. Still, it’s been weeks by now, surely they can at least talk on the phone? Quentin - well, he wants to see Eliot again, more than anything, but he doesn’t know if he wants Eliot to see him like this anyway. 

He was already too much work to be wanted, when there was a choice. And now? What if Eliot finds as little use for him as Julia or Margo seem to have done? Can he bear that? Much better, Quentin knows, not to see Eliot until he has a better handle on all this, until he can take care of himself and won’t be a burden, even as a friend. But he desperately wants to talk to him.

**Could you? Please? Maybe get a phone number I can call and talk to him?**

** _I will, promise. I have to go, but I’ll write again soon._ **

**Bye, Alice. Thanks.**

Something eases, a knot in Quentin’s chest he almost hadn’t known was there. The awful tension of  _ not knowing _ . But it’s replaced by nerves, by a fear that claws deep into the core of him. Because he still doesn’t know what Eliot will make of this, still doesn’t know if Eliot blames him for being possessed. 

Some of the not knowing might turn out to have been merciful, and what does he do if that’s the case?

<><><>

  
  


Eliot is dozing on the couch when the front door opens. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes - he still doesn’t feel he knows Kady all that well, on a personal level, but he trusts her to know how to keep her defenses up. But the quick footsteps he hears seem to be coming his way, so he opens one eye and is more than a little surprised to find Alice Quinn looking at him. She’s wearing - well, the skirt suit is Library grey, but her shirt is vivid blue, and he guesses it’s as good a metaphor as any for these reforms of hers he’s heard Kady talking about. 

“Can I help you?” He knows that Alice made her amends while he was - gone. Margo’s told him that. But the fact remains that Eliot’s last memory of Alice is her betrayal, and that makes this strange.

Alice perches on the edge of the coffee table, smoothing down her skirt. “Do you have a replacement cell phone yet?” she asks, abrupt. 

What the hell? “Yes, why?” he asks, sitting up so that he isn’t lying down looking up at her. His stomach twinges, but only twinges, luckily. The axe wound is healing nicely; it’s the exhaustion from the Monster’s misuse of his body, and some weird battle magic that was used on his leg, that’s taking forever to heal properly.

“Because I want to give it to Quentin. The only news he’s had of you is that they were waking you up - he never got Margo’s number, and Julia is apparently not keeping in touch with the New York contingent.” 

“Of course she isn’t,” Eliot says before he can stop himself. “But I… I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea for Quentin to talk to me until he’s out.” Alice is not the person he wants to tell this to, but… Well, the funny thing is that, if nothing else, he knows she cares about Quentin too. That’s been the heart of more than one of their problems, but it also means she’s likely to understand his concern. “The Monster hurt him, a lot, with my body. I might be a trigger for him, I don’t want him to relapse.”

“What are you talking about?” Alice says blankly. 

Eliot has a sudden terrible feeling that he has missed something big. What did Margo say, when he asked about Quentin?  _ “He’s just not here - he went away to an inpatient clinic for therapy, but he’s all right, you’ll be able to see him once he gets back. I promised he’d have time to see you after, OK?” _

He swallows hard. “Quentin - Margo said he was inpatient for therapy. He spiraled again, didn’t he? He’s back in the hospital?” 

Alice goes white and Eliot’s heart sinks. “No one told you what happened?” she asks, carefully. Eliot can only shake his head, and Alice stands up, pacing. “I can’t believe no one told you. Look, you’re not wrong, Q wasn’t in great mental shape, but it wasn’t hospitalization bad, at least not as far as I know. That’s not the kind of therapy he had to go away for.” 

“Alice,” Eliot says, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Tell me what happened. Now.” 

Alice turns to look at him. “We - Quentin, 23, and I went to the Mirror Realm to dump the Monster Twins. You know about that, and Everett showing up?” She waits for Eliot to nod, then continues. “So when Everett broke the Seam-mirror, Quentin cast, to fix it. The magic went haywire like it always does, Everett was disintegrated in the blast and Quentin - Eliot, he’s in physical therapy because he lost half his leg. It was disintegrated too.”

Eliot’s mind comes to a screeching halt. “What?” he whispers. “I - I don’t - where is he? Where did he go? Why would he leave when, if he was hurt that badly he should be here where we can take care of him, why…?” He’s not making much sense, even to himself, and he knows it, but all he can think is that he’s been here, forcing himself not to ask about Q because he didn’t trust himself to stay away, he wanted to protect him, and instead - 

Instead Q is somewhere not here, trying to deal with a life-changing injury. What the fuck, why didn’t Margo tell him specifically what happened?

“Dr. Lipson recommended a clinic for magicians where they could help him,” Alice says, her voice unusually gentle. “It’s in San Diego.” 

Quentin is in San Diego. He’s on the  _ other end of the country _ being treated for losing his fucking leg, and he’s  _ alone  _ out there. Julia’s God knows where, Alice is at least clearly in touch with Quentin, which is something but she’s still at the Library most of the time, and Margo has been here, worrying over Eliot and angling long-distance to get her throne back while - while Quentin - 

“Why didn’t anyone go with him?” he asks, shaken. “He shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Alice looks uncertain. “I don’t know. Q and I - we’re not - it’s complicated. It’s always complicated, I know that, but I don’t think it would have been good for either of us if I went with him. I talk to him regularly but it’s with these journals I enchanted. I think he’s all right, but he spends more time drawing little pictures than talking about anything but his therapy progress or what he’s reading in his downtime. Until yesterday, which is when I found out he didn’t know how you were.” 

“How I - how -” Quentin’s asking about  _ him _ ? Eliot wants to either laugh or cry at the absurdity of it. What a fucking pair they are. Eliot is still trying to find words when the door opens, Margo walking in. 

“Hey, Quinn, what’s - Eliot, what’s wrong?” Margo says, attention immediately diverted from mild curiosity about Alice to worry about him. Eliot turns to stare at her, not sure what he feels. 

“Alice, could you come back later, please?” he asks, not looking away from Margo. 

“But I wanted -”

“I’ll take care of that, I promise,” Eliot assures her. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Alice look between him and Margo, then nod to herself. She leaves, and when Eliot hears the door close, he takes a deep breath. “Margo,” he says, his voice strangely calm, “why didn’t you tell me what happened to Quentin?” 

Margo frowns. “I… I did tell you. I said he went away for therapy. I figured you weren’t ready to hear more and that’s why you didn’t ask. I didn’t want you to worry when you’re still a mess -” 

“I thought he was on the locked ward again! I thought that thing tortured him so much with  _ my body _ that he relapsed!” Eliot yells, all composure gone in a flash. “I thought I should stay away from him to protect him, to let him heal! And now I find out from Alice, rather than my best friend who’s supposed to care about him too, that he lost half his fucking leg and everyone just cheerfully shipped him across the country, alone!”

Margo folds her arms, pressing her lips together. “It wasn’t like that. We didn’t - I talked to Wicker, Lipson told her this was the best place, safer than working with a Muggle facility closer to home, and both of us thought that the sooner Quentin got help, the less likely this would send him off into a spiral.” 

Eliot thinks of his dreams, the ones he knows are memories. Thinks of Quentin, quiet and pale with shadows under his eyes, even the Monster fretting that he’s too quiet now, too easy to pick up and move around, how fragile he felt, more even than most humans.

Quentin was already in a spiral. How did no one see? He’d thought that was why Quentin was inpatient again, had thought someone must have noticed, encouraged him to get help. But that - that’s not what happened. 

“You thought the best way for him to not spiral was to be sent to California, by himself. Are you fucking serious? This is Quentin we’re talking about, when has being isolated  _ ever  _ been good for him? I didn’t even get a chance to see him. The first thing I asked when I woke up was to find out where he was, it didn’t occur to you that I’d want to know right away, so I could at least fucking call him?” Eliot isn’t stupid, he knows he wouldn’t have been able to do more than that right away, but he could have done that much. He could have been there, even in a long-distance way, he could have done something.

What must Quentin think? Knowing him, he probably thinks they were trying to get rid of him when he got sent off; does he think Eliot agrees with that? Does he think he’s not welcome anymore because he’s hurt, because even when he’s recovered things will be different?

“I was worried about you!” Margo snaps. “You nearly  _ died _ , Eliot. In surgery, and then after it was touch and go for way too long because that thing abused your body so much. And I know you, you’d have worried over him and fucked yourself up more -” 

“Are you saying you sent him away for my sake?!” Eliot snaps, furious and horrified all at once by the implication.

“Not - it was the best thing for both of you!” Margo says, a touch of alarm in her defensiveness now. “Eliot, come on. The last time you were upset about Quentin, you shot a fucking Monster and ended up possessed over it. You needed to heal, you still need to heal, and you can’t do that if you’re worried about Q. Let him take the time he needs, you take the time you need, and then… Look, I told him he could come visit in Whitespire once he’s getting around better - hell, he could finally move in there, I didn’t say that to him because I didn’t think he’d want to, but he can. Whatever, just don’t push it now. It’s not good for either of you.” 

The only thing keeping Eliot from exploding completely is the fact that he knows Margo well enough to know she means it - or at least thinks she does. She can’t or won’t see that it’s not good enough. That it can’t be good enough. And maybe some of that is Eliot’s own fault - he never told her the full story about him and Q, after all. So she doesn’t know, no one knows but Eliot, how afraid Quentin is that no one really wants him, that one day he’ll wake up alone. 

Only Eliot knows, and what had he done with that? Used it to make sure Quentin never reached out to him again the same way he did that day in the throne room - he’d only meant to push them back to status quo, but the damage done there went far past it. Would Quentin have agreed to replace the guard in the first place, if things had been different? 

Maybe, it is Quentin after all. But maybe not. There’s no way to know. But Eliot does know he can’t leave Quentin alone now. Not with this, not with something that can’t help but change his life forever. “Did anyone even visit him? Did it even occur to you to call him?” he asks Margo, who looks away. 

“I’ve been - focused on you, and negotiating with Fen… It’s not like we banished him. I told him, the sooner he’s better, the sooner he can come back.” 

“And you really think that’ll convince him he’s still welcome?” Eliot says, caustic. “You used to know us both better than that, Margo.” He reaches for his cane and gets to his feet, heading for the room he’s been using since being discharged. 

“Where are you going?” 

“Where do you think? San Diego.”

  
  


<><><>

  
  


After Quentin’s latest written talk with Alice, he finds himself reaching for one of the sketchbooks he’s not yet touched. Sometimes, he draws without really paying attention, and this is one of those times - he finds, looking down, that he’s drawn little sketches of the coronation. Eliot crowning Margo, pulling Alice to her feet after crowning her. Margo crowning Quentin himself, Penny watching them all, off to the side. Eliot again, the way he’d looked up at Quentin when he’d crowned him High King. 

It’s - Quentin wants, suddenly,  _ viscerally _ , to go back to that day. To go back to it with - not with everything, he doesn’t think he’d be functional if he brought back everything, but enough. Just enough so that Alice is never a Niffin, that Penny never dies. That he, he doesn’t run away, leaving Margo and Eliot holding the bag that is ruling Fillory. Maybe if he could go back with just enough information to tell the five of them as they were what was looming, then… then… 

It’s a pointless thought. A silly, bitter daydream. And for all that the Time Key, in the end, came to his hand (his hand with the dirt of Eliot’s grave under the nails), Quentin is no Jane Chatwin. Even if he could, he knows he wouldn’t. And he’d been tempted, hadn’t he? At Brakebills South during the timeshare spell, tolerating Mayakovsky’s ridiculous instructions, or when Alice confronted him after? Hadn’t he wanted to warn her what was coming for them, or leave a note for himself to not be a fucking idiot? Hadn’t he wanted to call Julia and somehow warn her about Reynard, hadn’t he wanted to call Eliot about not-Mike? 

But he knows better. And he didn’t. So, nothing but a pointless mind game. 

Except that the pointless mind game has unknotted something in Quentin’s head, and he spends the rest of the day with that sketchbook - his physical and occupational sessions are over for the day, he isn’t scheduled with Dr. Barlow. He draws bits and pieces of the last four years, no rhyme or reason. The good and the bad, until he’s drawing the Monster and the spill of golden sparks, the cracked Seam-mirror and he can’t. He can’t  _ breathe _ . He yanks those pages out and tears them to shreds, wants to set them on fire but dumps the pieces in the trash instead. 

He doesn’t know where the anger came from. He doesn’t know why it won’t  _ leave _ . He flips back through the other drawings, and even other bad moments, caught in charcoal and pastel, don’t make him want to tear the images of them apart. He looks at his hands, covered in black dust and smears of color, and remembers when he ended his days with his hands coated in chalk dust. When there was a ring on his left hand. 

He can’t  _ breathe _ .

That night, inexplicably, he dreams of golden sparks, of an outline in them that looks like his own shadow. They turn to dreams of a bonfire, shadowed figures around it that he  thinks might be his friends, only he doesn’t think he’s there. Or they can’t see him. Something. Quentin wakes in the dark and it wasn’t a nightmare, not exactly, but he feels  _ shaken _ , he... He has that too-tight feeling again, the one that tells him there must have been a magic surge in his sleep. He’s started to notice that he  _ feels it _ , when magic surges. Lipson said he was disconnected from the ambient, but that there might be long-term changes to his magic. Quentin has barely used his magic since then, but… 

Three times now, he’s felt this, and the other two times, he  _ knows  _ there was a surge because there are meters around the clinic that showed as much. He has to tell someone, he knows, but he’s not sure who. Not sure how to explain it, or the tingle down his spine every time he gets close to a spelled object to touch it. Or when he’s that close to a fellow magician, come to that. It feels different, deeper, when it’s objects, maybe because of his discipline, who knows. Quentin hadn’t realized at first, his head too foggy for it to register, but as his body recovers and his head clears, he’s noticed these things. 

There won’t be any more sleeping tonight, so he reaches over for the light, and then with a flick of his wrist like he’s doing a card trick, pulls his Kindle out from under his blanket, his art supplies from his pillowcase. He’s good at summoning objects. He’d learned that in a life he never lived, and Eliot had idly speculated that it might be his discipline. It’s not, but he’s still good at it - like Eliot’s good at fire magic, for one example. 

It’s easier than getting his crutches and hobbling over the handful of steps, anyway. He should make the effort, of course, but it’s one in the morning. He turns on his latest audiobook -  _ Shatterglass _ , Tris Chandler is in the far south trying to teach a guy whose magic is mixed into glass and lightning - and tries to draw some of the things he’s hearing described. Until he stops, and summons another book, the one he’d spent all day with. He flips through the sketches idly, until he comes to one of Julia and 23, to another one of Margo, a smug grin on her face as she holds up her axes. 

Suddenly, he thinks he understands something. It fizzes under his skin when he turns the light off to watch his room fill with sunrise light instead, colors playing on the walls, through his physical therapy session and his occupational one, the shower he takes afterwards. He’s seeing Dr. Barlow today, and he has things to say.

“I know it’s my own responsibility to take care of myself. I do. But it’s - I wasn’t that subtle. I dared the Monster to kill me - and yes, it was half a bluff because what I really wanted was to make it not kill El, but if it had killed me. If it had, I didn’t care. I almost didn’t run at the Seam, and I’d been like that for _weeks_. I almost stuck my hand up a razor-bladed hole and, and Julia knew enough to not let me do that but she didn’t see… I don’t know why she didn’t?” Quentin says, and he’s up and on his crutches for this session, because he can’t keep still. Dr. Barlow watches him, steady and unruffled, and it almost makes it worse. 

“And Margo! She comes in waving her fucking axes, and thank God she did, but she left me! She left - she couldn’t deal with that thing in Eliot’s body but neither could I and I didn’t have the option to run! She couldn’t take thirty seconds to, to ask how I was holding up, I don’t… and as soon as I could they were both rushing me out here like they couldn’t wait to see me go. I don’t know if I’m even supposed to come back.”

He drops heavily into the chair again. “The only one who cared enough to help was Alice, and I paid her back by  _ using  _ her. I didn’t know I was, I didn’t mean to, but I did. And Eliot - what if he blames me? I don’t, I blame me, I’d understand, but I don’t know if I can bear it.” 

He looks at his hands, curled into fists in his lap. “No one came with me. No one even asked if I wanted to come out this far, or take my chances with a Muggle therapist closer to home. No one asked if I wanted someone to come with me, or - or anything. Alice gave me the journal, and Julia calls me for fifteen minutes once a week. And I can’t help thinking - you say I’m more than my usefulness, but what if that’s all I am to the only people I have left? What if I have nothing now because I - because I’m - what do I do then?” 

Dr. Barlow studies him, her dark eyes level, and Quentin lets out a shaky breath, forcing himself to unclench his hands. His fingers ache. “I don’t have the answers for you, Quentin,” she tells him calmly. “I think you know that. You don’t know what your friends will do - but if they only want what you can do for them, then they aren’t good for you. I think you know that.” 

He does know that. That’s the worst of it, really. At some point, he’s going to have to find out how much of what he fears is true, and then… then… He can’t decide what he’s going to do until he knows, and he can’t know until he’s well enough to see if he’s still welcome in New York. Which, right now, he isn’t. But he is getting better, and he supposes that’s something. 

Dr. Barlow’s office isn’t far from Dr. Ravenwood’s, the same place where Quentin came through… it’s been almost two months now, since he arrived. He hadn’t noticed, until just now. He’s using his crutches to get back to his room, determined to get better at this. The forearm crutches now, finally, which are more maneuverable. 

Dr. Ravenwood’s door swings open, and Quentin stops abruptly, swaying a little, not wanting to risk colliding with the… the tall man in a dark suit, a familiar black cane with a silver ram’s handle… 

What? 

“Eliot?” Quentin says, stunned, and Eliot turns to face him, looking almost as stunned as Quentin feels. Those familiar eyes take him in, and the first thing Quentin notices, dizzily, is that Eliot isn’t looking at him any differently. He’s not shying away from the leg or staring at it, he’s looking at Quentin like nothing’s changed. He’s looking at him the way he had in the park that day. 

Eliot’s looking at him like he loves him and - and Quentin doesn’t understand. How is Eliot even here, and why, and why is he looking at Quentin like that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	3. Tread Lightly On My Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot joins Quentin in San Diego, and they start to work through the mess their lives have become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter include discussion of the Monster and Quentin's s4 mental state but also a mention of Eliot's suicidal ideation post-Mike.
> 
> Once again, artistic license has been taken with the medical aspects. However! Per my research, "don" and "doff" really are the appropriate words for putting on and taking off a prosthetic.
> 
> As ever, love and thanks to my RAO enablers, particularly Maii for reading over my drafts.

Quentin looks better than he had in Eliot’s dream flashbacks, at least. That is a depressingly low bar to clear, but it’s better than his worst fears, so Eliot will take it. But he still looks tired, pale from being indoors, and still too thin. And, of course, there’s the empty air where half his left leg should be, his pant leg pinned up so it doesn’t hang down where it could catch on things. Eliot wants nothing more than to wrap Quentin up in his arms and never let go, but Quentin’s honest shock at the sight of him keeps him frozen. 

He really didn’t expect to see anyone, did he?

“Hey, Q. I was just heading for your room,” he says, because there’s not much else to say. “I just found out what happened.” It sounds weak, and Eliot knows it. He can see the skepticism in Quentin’s eyes and starts to explain, but Quentin shakes his head. 

“I - can we - not do this in the hallway?” he asks, and Eliot sees his hands tightening on the grips of his crutches. “I can’t talk about all this in the middle of the hallway.” 

The only thing that keeps Eliot from trying to help Quentin on the way to his room is his own awareness of how much both of them hate needing that kind of help. Also, Quentin… doesn’t exactly seem happy to see him, does he? Surprised and tense is more like it, and, well, it hurts. It hurts like hell, but Eliot supposes he can’t really blame anyone but himself. Maybe he should have called first. Lipson offered him the phone number, when he showed up at her office demanding to be let through the portal to the Ravenwood Clinic, and that might have been smarter. 

But, well, he’s here now, so he’ll just have to brazen his way through it. 

The door shuts behind them and Eliot has a moment to register the art supplies strewn over the bed before Quentin turns back to him. “What do you mean you just found out?” 

Eliot sighs. “Why don’t we sit down, for both our sakes?” he suggests, and it isn’t even a lie - his leg is informing him that it is not fond of how much moving around he’s done today. But he also knows it’s less likely to make Quentin bristle. He probably should respect Q’s space, sit in the chair rather than next to him on the side of the bed, but he’s been invading Q’s space since day one. It’s part of what makes them, well, them. 

He’s barely settled next to Quentin when he suddenly finds himself with an armful of clingy nerd. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and I’m so glad to see you but should you even be up and about like this yet?” Quentin mumbles into his shoulder, and at first Eliot is too busy hugging him back, hiding his face in Q’s soft hair and breathing him in, to answer. But then the words sink in. 

“What the hell are you sorry for, Q?” he asks, voice muffled because he hasn’t lifted his head yet. And he isn’t going to, any more than he plans to let go. Quentin hesitates, and then Eliot feels him starting to shake. Shit. He holds on a little tighter, trying to soothe him. “Hey, Q, come on, it’s all right.” 

It’s not, for about a million reasons, but even so. Sometimes the lying platitude is called for.

“You used to be a better liar,” Quentin mumbles. “And I’m sorry for - you got possessed because you wanted to save me, I -”  
  


“No,” Eliot says flatly. He doesn’t let go of Quentin, can’t bear to, but he does push him back a little, enough to see his face. “Quentin, you look at me, and you listen. What happened to me was not your fault. No one could have known what would happen. And I’d shoot that thing again, understand me?” 

“Eliot -” 

“I mean it, Q.” And he does. Even with his memories of what the Monster did to Quentin, he means it, because - Eliot is not stupid. He knows that the Monster using his body made it worse, but it would have been terrible anyway. How long would it have taken for the Monster to start tormenting Q at Blackspire, with no possible escape for him there? So, yeah, he still means it. “We’re going to be all right, OK? And if I hadn’t shot it, you’d still be there. That’s - it’s not acceptable, Quentin. It never was.”

Quentin sighs. “I’d say it was my choice but, um, I don’t have any moral high ground to stand on with that kind of thing now.” 

There’s a story there of some kind, Eliot’s sure, but he doesn’t ask, not yet. “Regardless, what happened to me isn’t your fault, you got that?” 

“OK, Eliot. But you - Margo said you’d - that we’d both need to recover,” Quentin says, sitting up so he can see Eliot’s face. It also means he pulls away, and Eliot already misses holding him which… feels stupid, but after all that’s happened, he figures he’s entitled to miss it. “She said we’d distract each other, are you all right? You have a cane, I…” 

_ Margo, what the fuck? _ Eliot is going to have a long talk with his best friend at some point. He thinks she meant that they’d both manage to hurt themselves more trying to help each other - and, embarrassingly, one or both of them probably would have managed to do just that - but whether she said it like that or not, Quentin doesn’t seem to have taken it that way. 

“I’m fine, Q. I get tired more easily than I’d like, but that’s about it by now. The leg… some kind of battle magic injury, Lipson says it’ll ease up on its own but she can’t say when. It’s not a big deal, especially…” 

Quentin flinches, looking away. “Yeah, I know. So did you come because it’s easiest to hear the bad news from you?” 

_ Wait, what? _ And then it clicks - Eliot had been right. He’d known, but he’d hoped that it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. “Q, there isn’t any bad news.” 

“Oh no?” And this is - he’d almost forgotten. With the Memory Quentin being an echo of Quentin at his softest, Eliot had forgotten this particular side of Quentin. The brittle anger, defensive and lashing out. Quentin pulls away from the hug, and it leaves Eliot feeling cold. 

“So it hasn’t been decided that a cripple’s fucking useless to a group always hitting one crisis after another? After all, what am I gonna do? My magic’s no better than an exploding car and the best I could manage otherwise is to throw a crutch at someone if they attack.” 

Eliot could lash out right back, point out that he’s not the picture of physical capability right now himself. But he won’t, because as he just told Quentin, his leg will heal. Quentin’s won’t grow back. “OK, first off, you’re not useless and you never will be. You’re hurt, that’s a very different thing. Secondly, who called you an exploding car?”

Quentin huffs a sound like a very twisted laugh. “23, but Kady and Julia both seemed to think he was right on the money. I guess I proved him a little wrong after winning the Push game, and really it was probably just their idea of a joke but I… we were in front of a guy asking a serious question and I just -” 

“Oh, fuck 23,” Eliot says flatly. “He barely knows you and he can’t see any of us when he’s too busy assuming we’re all the versions from his timeline. As for Kady and Julia, hell, Q, I don’t know, but that’s bullshit, OK?” 

“I mean -” 

“No. It’s bullshit. I know you… you think you break stuff, but come on, Q. These past few years we’ve all fucked up the things we were trying to fix. It’s not a you thing, it’s our luck ever since Jane Chatwin decided to make us her toys.” Eliot leans forward, takes Quentin’s hands in his. “Seriously. Margo and I try to improve Fillory, I get booted because it turns out I was made High King to fuck shit up more. We all worked to get magic back, only to have one of our own blow it up in our faces and then the Library stole it anyway when we got a Hail Mary pass around that.” 

“A Hail Mary pass?” 

“Just because I hate football doesn’t mean I could avoid learning the terminology. My high school lived and breathed the damn team. That is completely beside the point, Coldwater.” But maybe not  _ completely _ , because there’s a slight upturn to Quentin’s lips when he looks up from their joined hands to meet Eliot’s eyes. Not quite a smile, but close. He doesn’t want to chase that hint of happiness away, but he has to say this. “I tried to save you from the Monster, and I end up making it able to hurt you all the worse, using my body to do it.” 

“But that was my -” 

“No, it wasn’t,” Eliot says. “Making a deal with the guard without telling anyone beforehand was your fault, yeah. But Margo and I shouldn’t have gone behind your back to save you. Maybe if we’d made it clear we weren’t gonna let you go through with it, we could’ve come up with some kind of failsafe in case the bullet didn’t work. Not the point. The point is, all of us have broken shit, usually trying to fix something else. The point is that you have never been useless, and you aren’t now either. You have to heal, that’s all.” 

Quentin shakes his head. “El, even once I have a prosthetic I’m not sure…”

“We’ll figure it out, Q. But no one wants you gone for good.” 

Quentin shakes his head again. “You weren’t awake, El. You didn’t see Julia basically shipping me out here before I’d even agreed to go - she packed like everything I own, did you know that? Or Margo, telling me if I was there when you woke up it’d be bad for you, because you’d be upset, and she barely even looked at me when she came back before. Alice and I can only talk in writing, and, and…” 

“OK, we’re gonna have a talk about your best friend and mine later in which I’m going to need details because what the fuck,” Eliot decides. “But for right now, Quentin, please trust me. I’m getting the sense that our friends are idiots, but no one -” 

Quentin barks out an awful laugh. “Eliot, I almost _ killed myself _ and no one fucking noticed I was spiraling.” Immediately, his eyes widen and he goes white. “I - El, you don’t - it’s, I shouldn’t be dumping -” 

Eliot holds up a hand and Quentin stops talking, or at least Eliot thinks he does. He probably wouldn’t hear anyway over the rushing in his ears.  _ I almost killed myself. _ Oh God. It might actually be  _ worse  _ than Eliot thought. “OK. First off, I came here so you wouldn’t be alone, because I wanted to be here for you. So you aren’t ‘dumping’ anything on me,” he says, keeping his voice level only thanks to years of practice in another lifetime. He still remembers how to keep calm when Quentin’s worst dark moods leave him terrified; he’s a little rusty but it’s coming back quickly. 

So he takes a deep breath, reaching out to brush Quentin’s hair out of his eyes before taking both his hands again. “Secondly, Q, what happened?” 

Quentin looks down at their hands, and for a long moment the only sound is their breathing. “I slipped, El,” he says finally, voice soft. ‘Slipped’ was their word back in Fillory for when Quentin got bad, when he hurt himself or found himself planning an attempt. “I didn’t - I knew I wasn’t all right. But I didn’t know how bad it was till I was at the Seam, casting, and… I knew how easy it would be. To just not run. I was tempted, but I… I couldn’t go through with it.” 

Eliot can’t help it; he pulls Quentin into another tight hug. “Thank God you couldn’t,” he says in Quentin’s ear, and after a moment, Q relaxes in his arms, laying his head on Eliot’s shoulder. _ I love you, _ he thinks, but now doesn’t feel like the time to say so. He refused to take Quentin seriously once because they’d just been overwhelmed with memory magic. He doesn’t want Quentin to think he isn’t serious because of panic, or something. 

So for now he’s just going to do exactly what he said he came here to do - be here for Quentin. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin isn’t sure what to do, with Eliot here. 

On the face of it, that’s ridiculous. He’s just spent the better part of a year striving for exactly this - to get Eliot back. And once, there was never anywhere he was more at ease than with Eliot, even when he was being dragged around New York City for a missing spellbook or being told he couldn’t just  _ skip  _ the party that night, but yes he can tuck himself in a corner as long as he’s there. And even after kingdoms and magical messes involving friends and ex-girlfriends meant they rarely saw each other, clicking back into place was easy as breathing. Even after the throne room, with Quentin trying to hide the fact that Eliot broke his heart, it had still been easy to just  _ be  _ with him.

But now Quentin doesn’t know what to do. 

“It’s not about the Monster,” he tells Dr. Barlow, a week after Eliot arrives. He’s staying down the street in a hotel family members and friends of Ravenwood patients often use to be close by, and he comes to visit every day. “I don’t see the Monster when I look at El; I was afraid I might, but I don’t. I know him, I know it is him.”  _ I know him in my very bones, but I somehow didn’t quite realize it until I lost him and got him back, _ he thinks but doesn’t say. Not that the doc would judge him, he’s pretty sure she wouldn’t, but it feels too… melodramatic to say out loud. “I’m not afraid of Eliot, I don’t think I can be. Or… well…” 

“That’s not entirely true, is it?” Dr. Barlow asks. 

Quentin sighs. “No, I guess not. But I already know he - he loves me but it’s not the same, he’s not in love with me. It’s not like he can break my heart again, not when I know better than to try. But, well… I don’t know why he came. He said he came to be here for me, but why? No one, he’s still hurt himself, he should be taking care of himself, not… not… He spent a lifetime stuck dealing with my fucking mental illness, he shouldn’t have to deal with me like  _ this _ .” The words feel ripped from him, from somewhere deep and aching in his chest. 

“I don’t think he does have to. After all, he’s here of his own free will, isn’t he?” 

“You don’t know El. He, he acts like he doesn’t give a shit about anything, but the truth is that he’ll do anything, if it’s for someone he cares about.” What scares Quentin most, enough so that he can’t even voice it to Dr. Barlow, is that Eliot is here out of  _ pity _ . But obligation would be almost as bad, and is a little easier to say out loud.

“It doesn’t follow that he feels obligated. You should talk to him about it.” 

“And what? We don’t talk about - our life before.” It had been a mutual, unspoken agreement. The only person to know anything about it had been Margo, and she thinks she erased it completely instead of… well, whatever she actually did. Quentin prefers to think it all did happen, that it’s just another timeline like the thirty-nine loops that preceded this one and they just have the memories like Fogg remembers all forty loops, but he’s aware that he’ll never know for sure. “I can’t bring this up without bringing that up.” 

“Has it occurred to you that not discussing these things could be why you’re so uncertain now?” 

Quentin really does like Dr. Barlow. But at times like these, he almost wishes he didn’t. Because the worst part is that she’s probably right. It’s just that these things feel like his problem. He’s the one with a stupid contrary heart that wants more than it should - it still feels disloyal to Julia sometimes to think it, but the truth is that Eliot’s the best friend Quentin’s ever had. He’s the only one who seemed to see Quentin as he was and was willing to just run with that, no pressure to change himself. 

That should be enough for him. That should be  _ more  _ than enough for him. Wanting Eliot to feel the same way Quentin does feels like demanding too much, but Quentin can’t help it. Sometimes he thinks his heart was lost from that first moment, even if he’d been unaware of it. Even if his crushes on Julia and more mildly on James had been as genuinely close to being in love as he’d ever felt at the time, even though his feelings for Alice, when it was good and when it was a disaster, had absolutely been real. Even with all that, some part of his heart was Eliot’s from the very beginning, and that part had eventually dragged the rest of him with it. 

But if he can’t have Eliot’s love, he can live with it, as long as he doesn’t lose his friendship. And that’s why he’s afraid to speak. He’s afraid that bringing up the past will shatter that friendship. He can’t risk it. Even now, when things are strange. “Maybe it’s just that I got used to my solo routine. Or that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have friends who check in.” He doesn’t bother to hide the bitter note in his voice; the more he thinks about how isolated he’d become during the Monster crisis, the angrier he is.

Especially now that Eliot has so clearly demonstrated that there’s other options. “He and Alice are the only ones who cared enough to do anything but - wave me off,” he says finally, staring at his hands. “And Alice - she and I are talking by magic journal writing because we’re both pretty sure we’ll just keep fucking each other up if we talk in person. And Eliot, I can’t - I can’t lose him. I’m afraid to ask again because, because I kept pushing with Alice, you know? And I shouldn’t have. I don’t know if…”

Quentin stops, taking a deep breath. “So, there was Arielle, right. Thing is, Ari and I should never have gotten married, we were never in love, exactly, we just… she’s probably the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend with benefits? We got married because of Teddy, and then we split up anyway. My, my thing is, I’ve only been in love twice. And I don’t have anything else to draw on. Alice told me no and I ignored it, I pushed and I pushed, and we’re all twisted up now. Eliot shot me down and I - what if I ruin  _ us  _ because I pushed too hard? It’s not worth it.”

“Are they alike? Alice and Eliot, I mean.” 

This is such an unexpected question that Quentin is briefly floored by it. “I - they’re both really good magicians and they both care a lot more than they want people to know, but, um. No, not really, otherwise.”

“Then maybe your experiences with one shouldn’t dictate how you handle the other.” 

Quentin shakes his head. “Yeah, but no one likes being pressured into something they’ve already refused.” 

“No,” Dr. Barlow agrees. “But different people say no for different reasons. And you said before that you’ve wondered if your own flippant way of asking him is part of why he said no.” 

Damn it. She’s got him there. 

The thing is, talking in theoreticals with his shrink is - well, not easy, not exactly. But there’s no risk to it. She isn’t going to tell anyone, she’s literally not allowed to tell anyone, and as time-fucked and otherwise-fucked as Quentin’s love life is, he’s pretty sure she’s heard worse. But actually talking to Eliot about this, taking that risk… 

It had seemed easy in the throne room, and even then he’d come at it kinda sideways, trusting in their past life to fill in the blanks for him. That had blown up in his face spectacularly, so he doesn’t exactly have much faith in his ability to carry this off without a disaster. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot honestly cannot remember a time when it was this hard to be with Quentin. Not even in the immediate aftermath of the emotion bottle threesome. He’d been too fucked up to be as upset about the backlash as he might otherwise have been, and then of course they’d been thrown headfirst back into crisis mode. After the dust had settled, it had almost not mattered anymore. Or, at least, not in ways that led to things being uncomfortable with Quentin. 

They had fifty years together, and some of Quentin’s spirals had been frankly terrifying - he tries not to think of the very worst of them, tries not to remember the smell of blood or how pale Quentin had been - but this is… 

They’d always trusted each other. And Eliot isn’t sure that Quentin still  _ does _ , though what he can’t figure out is if he broke Quentin’s trust in him, or if someone else just broke Quentin’s ability to trust at all. Part of him wonders if he’s making things worse by being here, if he should leave - but some deeper instinct tells him that if he does leave, then whatever is still left of their relationship will shatter past any hope of mending. 

_ “Know that when I’m braver it’s because I learned it from you.” _

He knew it wouldn’t be easy, didn’t he?

“Can I draw you?” Quentin asks one day. “You can have my Kindle, I’ve got streaming on there so you won’t be bored, but…” 

Quentin draws a lot now, Eliot knows this. He’s even seen some of the sketches, mostly scenes from the books Quentin’s been reading, but this is new. “I - yeah. Sure.” He settles with the Kindle, scrolling through Quentin’s watchlist before he goes browsing. 

“Why are there so many Star Treks. Why is that a thing and why do you have them all?” he asks while Quentin shifts on the bed so his sketchbook sits better in his lap. 

“Because they had an audience and because I like them. Turn a little to the left.” 

“You’re bossy in artist mode. How many times can Scotty or whoever beam people around?” 

Quentin snorts. “I know for a fact that Margo makes you watch TNG with her when she’s sick,” he points out. “I’d think that by now you’d know there’s a lot that can be done with aliens, not that it stops them from rehashing plots from new angles.” 

“Quentin,” Eliot says, long-suffering. “Do you think I paid attention to what I was watching? I simply decided to be entertained by some of the more ridiculous costume choices. One must learn to cope when surrounded by nerds.” 

“Oh, you like nerds, don’t deny that.” 

This is actually true, as a matter of fact. Eliot does have a preference for nerds, even predating his two favorites. Mostly because he’d decided almost as soon as he left Indiana to make a certain brand of hedonism his way of life, and as far as he’s concerned, nerds are just people who are really into what they like. It’s just as much an indulgence as any of Eliot’s, so why wouldn’t he like that in a person? “I never did deny that,” he says, very dignified. Quentin rolls his eyes, and for a moment it’s like old times between them. 

Which might have been why Eliot brought up the roster of Star Treks in the first place. 

He does eventually put something on, but he forgets what it is almost as soon as it starts playing, because he isn’t really watching it. He’s watching Quentin, the intense concentration on his face, the way the tip of his tongue pokes out between his lips when he pauses to rub his fingers over some line he drew. Then Quentin catches him at it, and Eliot tries to focus on the show he put on. 

It’s quiet except for the Kindle’s audio for a while, but then - 

“I’m sorry,” Quentin says quietly. Eliot looks up in surprise but Quentin’s gaze is fixed on his sketchbook. There’s a streak of charcoal on his cheek and a spot of blue pastel on his chin, but he’s still working. 

“Sorry for what?” Eliot asks, cautious. Quentin still doesn’t look up, but his hand stills on the paper. 

“I haven’t been exactly… I mean, you’re here visiting me every day and I’m not. The most friendly, I know. You came all this way and I should do better. I just. It’s hard to explain.” 

“Hey.” Eliot gets up and sits on the end of the bed, waiting until Quentin sets aside the sketchbook and finally looks at him. He puts a hand around Quentin’s remaining ankle, fingers curled round warm skin. It’s soothing - there’d been a Memory Quentin that kept him company in the Happy Place, but he’d been oddly cool to the touch, as if to remind Eliot he wasn’t real. “I wasn’t exactly expecting you to be bright and cheery here, Q. You’ve been through hell.” 

“It’s not that, not exactly.” Quentin sighs, running a hand through his hair. “It sounds stupid, actually, but I - I’d just gotten used to being alone out here.” 

“Should I not have come?” Eliot asks. He doesn’t exactly mean to, but he’s worried about it enough that he can’t help the words. 

“No,” Quentin says quickly, “but it’s, um. I’d sort of… recalibrated myself to doing this without anyone but, you know, the people whose job it is to help me? And shifting out of that mindset is, is harder than I thought, especially when I -” He looks away, hands twisting in his lap. 

Eliot has a bad feeling about this, and he wants to back the conversation up. He  _ wants  _ to, but he’s pretty sure that’s exactly what he shouldn’t do. “When you what, Q?” 

Quentin looks back at him, something horrible in his eyes. “Tell me you’re here ‘cause you wanna be. Please tell me you didn’t just feel - feel obligated because you, you pity me or something. Because I can’t -”

Eliot yanks his hand back like Quentin’s skin suddenly burned him. He almost feels like it had. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m only out here because I feel sorry for you, or I think I owed you a visit? The fuck, Quentin?” _ I love you, damn it,  _ ** _that’s _ ** _ why I’m here!  _ But he doesn’t say that.

“I don’t know what I think!” Quentin snaps. “My oldest fucking friend was right there while a  _ thing  _ wearing your body just - just - and she didn’t notice, and the fucking telepath either didn’t notice or didn’t care ‘cause he hates my guts, the only one who gave a fuck is the ex-girlfriend I’ve treated like shit!” He fists his hands in his hair, a gesture Eliot remembers from the Mosaic. Normally, he’d reach out now, draw Quentin’s hands out of his hair, but he feels frozen. 

“And then, and then - Julia practically shipped me out here, and Margo’s talking like my wanting to just, just  _ see you _ before I left would hurt you, telling me I could - visit in Fillory once I was better, I thought the two of you were just going to leave again and I. And I know I’m - even more fucking trouble now than I was, and I just. Can’t see why you’d  _ want  _ to be here.” 

There are times when Quentin needs to be gentled or soothed out of bad moods. There are times he needs to be bullied, and times he doesn’t need anything but company. Eliot picked up on this back when they were still just magical grad students, and figuring out which applied is a skill that, in a once-and-never life, he’d honed nearly to perfection. 

The hardest times, though, are the ones when what’s needed is just - honesty. Not coddling, but not bullying either. Just the truth. Eliot isn’t  _ good  _ at the truth. 

“I told you. I came here because I wanted to be here for you. I didn’t want you to be alone.” 

“But you -” 

“Quentin, be quiet. Let me finish,” Eliot says sharply, because maybe just a little bullying is in order after all. “I am not here out of pity, or obligation. I’m here because I -”  _ Because I’m in love with you. _ But no. If Quentin can’t even trust that Eliot’s care as a friend is sincere, then he won’t accept that now. “You’re one of my best friends. I care about you. I don’t do things like cross-country trips when I’m still using a cane for pity, OK?”

“El, you stayed in Fillory out of obl -” 

“Because I thought it would kill me,” Eliot says flatly. “I thought I deserved it, I wanted it, after Mike. Instead, Fillory saved me.” 

“Like the idea of it saved me,” Quentin whispers, a strange look crossing his face. “El, I never knew, I’m so -”

“Yeah, like that,” Eliot agrees. “And I didn’t want you to know, Q.” Now he does lean forward, hands curling round Quentin’s wrists and drawing his hands carefully out of his hair. “Look at me. I am here because I want to be here, because I’d rather be with you than anywhere else right now.”  _ Than anywhere else basically ever, _ he adds silently. “I need you to believe that.” 

Quentin looks at him, and then his face just crumples. “God, El. I’m sorry, I don’t - I didn’t mean -” He stops, closing his eyes, obviously trying to compose himself. Eliot wants to tell him he doesn’t have to, if he needs to cry that’s fine, but he’s - well. Frankly, Eliot is kind of hurt, and it keeps him just a little cold as he waits for Quentin to find his words.

“I’ve been alone for longer than just coming out here,” he finally says. “I’ve only really just… started to come to terms with it myself, talking to Dr. Barlow. But it’s like - it was like some part of me was, was screaming in the middle of a crowded room and no one heard me. And it’s like - I know Julia wanted to get her powers back, and I know Margo had responsibilities in Fillory, but I just. I just wanted, like, ten minutes to cry or whatever, dealing with the Monster was - it was - worse than anything - and no one seemed to see that I was, that I was falling to pieces.”

Quentin pauses, taking a breath, then starts again. “Alice was the only one who seemed to see me, to care that I was - not OK. And so I did a monumentally stupid thing and tried to restart things with her because, because some part of my brain thought that was the only way she would stick around. We’re not, um - we cut that off again, and for good, when I was still in the infirmary, but it was just so stupid. But, um, what it comes to is, I’m scared. And it’s not your fault, I know it isn’t but I just. If I trust you to be there, and you change your mind - ”

“Q -” 

“No, let me finish. I know it isn’t fair. I know I have no reason not to trust you - you’re one of my best friends, and you’ve never… We’ve, um, disagreed about certain… But you’ve always  _ been there _ , when it was in any way possible. I do trust you, I just can’t help the fear, after all that’s happened.”

Eliot’s heart aches. And it’s all the worse because Quentin’s ability to trust has always been one of the things Eliot’s been in awe of. How Quentin can give himself over so easily, trust and love, just throwing himself out there headfirst in the belief that someone will catch him because he would catch them. The information about Alice stings a little - it means Eliot now has to wonder if Quentin didn’t understand what else besides  _ “I’m alive” _ he meant to say that day, if he did understand but has moved on, or had just lost hope at that point. From what he’s said, the latter is probably part of it, but… 

_ Not the time, Waugh, _ he tells himself. He’ll figure that out later. “I’m not going to change my mind,” he tells Quentin, squeezing his hands. “Fun fact, there’s not much to do when trapped inside your head except think. I worked out a lot of shit, but the relevant part is, you’re one of the most important people in my life, OK? You’re - you’re - my home, all right?” 

Quentin blinks. “Margo -” 

“I need her just as much, of course I do, but in different ways.” Eliot rakes a hand through his hair, his other hand still holding one of Quentin’s. “So, when I was trapped in my head, did 23 say it was a mind palace thing? OK, so I had… memory versions of people I could conjure, and maybe I needed that. They were cheap imitations, and it really brought home that I need you. So I will be here for you, and I’m not going anywhere unless you don’t want me here.”

He pauses, then decides to explain what took him so long in the first place. “When I first woke up, I thought you were inpatient again. Miscommunication, and I was… afraid to ask more questions. I know it hurt you, I have flashes of the shit it did, and I know, Q, OK? I didn’t ask about you right away because I was afraid to go to you, afraid seeing me might be a trigger.”

Quentin shakes his head hard enough that his hair flies around his face. “You could never, El - I know you. The worst part was how much I knew it wasn’t you, even when, when… There were times it would do things that were like you, but it was always  _ wrong _ .”

Eliot smiles, reaching out to smooth down Quentin’s hair. It’s an excuse to touch him but apparently they both need it, because Quentin leans into his palm like a cat enjoying being petted. So Eliot doesn’t stop, gently stroking his fingers through the soft strands of hair. “I’m glad. The last thing I want is to hurt you. So I’m here, as long as you need me.” 

Quentin looks up at him, eyes a little too wide but soft in a way Eliot remembers mostly from another life but also a few late nights at the Cottage when they’d fallen asleep together on the couch or on one of their beds. “What if I always need you?”

“Then I’ll always be here,” Eliot says simply, and it’s not quite a declaration from either of them, but it feels like progress.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“You know, your mood has improved about a thousand percent since your friend with the fancy clothes showed up,” David comments as Quentin finishes his exercises one day, and Quentin, well. He has to agree. 

Things aren’t perfect, of course. For one thing, there’s still the subject of the throne room, and Eliot referencing that conversation out of  _ all possible options _ to prove he was still alive. Quentin doesn’t know if Eliot feels the questions of that looming over them in the same way he himself does, but he’s pretty sure they both know there’s things left unspoken. 

But while most of Quentin’s speech to Alice in the wake of their trip to South was misguided at best and at worst born entirely out of his depressive spiral, he’d been right about one thing. The expectations he used to hold - for himself and everyone else - had been, if not stupid, really fucking unreasonable. He’s learning to live in the moment, and in the moment, he’s getting around on his crutches pretty damn well, enough that he doesn’t need a wheelchair anymore. In the moment, he’s even doing better in his occupational therapy sessions. He doesn’t fall over anymore trying to put things in cabinets, and the forearm crutches mean he can’t drop a crutch. Though he does sometimes drop the thing he’s trying to put away. It’s a process. 

And best of all, in the moment, he has Eliot saying, “Quentin, there is charcoal on your face and pastel in your hair, how do you even manage that?” or, when he agreed to listen to one of Quentin’s audiobooks, “So the kid has plant tattoos on his hands that move and grow new flowers? I’m pretty sure I could find a spell for that trick, think I should?”

(Quentin’s answers, by the way, had been “I have no idea, I was focusing on the drawing, and I seem to remember that when you bake you get flour all over yourself so who’s talking?” to the first and “I mean, you could, but you’d just have to glamour them or hide them under your clothes anyway so what’s the point?” to the second.)

So, yeah. His mood is definitely improved. 

“He’s my best friend,” Quentin tells David with a shrug, because ‘best friend’ is the truth and the least complicated part of what Eliot is to him. “And we’ve been through a lot, so it’s good to see him mostly recovered as much as it is to, you know,  _ be  _ recovering.” 

“Yeah, I get that. Speaking of recovering. I want to put you on the temp leg next time, what do you say?” 

For a moment, Quentin can’t do anything but stare. David’s been measuring his stump regularly for the prosthetic for a while, since swelling means the size changes, but before now Quentin hadn’t been deemed strong enough. Then he grins outright. “David, I’ve only been pushing to get on that for a month now. If you think I’m ready then I say hell yes.” He pauses, tapping his fingers on his good knee. He has a thought, but he isn’t sure - he wants - 

“Hey, you said before, if I wanted, El could sit in on a session, right?” he asks. David, marking something on Quentin’s chart, looks up in surprise. 

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were up for that. Change your mind?

_ “So I’m here, as long as you need me.”  _

_ “What if I always need you?” _

_ “Then I’ll always be here.”  _

Quentin nods. “Yeah. I want him here.” It’s strange; he hadn’t wanted Eliot to see him fumbling around in occupational therapy, and physical therapy is just, like, crutches practice and strength exercises, so there didn’t seem to be much to see. But this - once he has a real prosthetic he can start working toward a new normal, for real. And he wants Eliot to see him first start that process. He wants to show Eliot that he believes him, about staying. It seems like a good start. 

He goes back to his room and manages to get into the shower - there’s a chair and a rail, so the trick is mostly balancing while getting undressed. He’s fairly good at it by now, which means he doesn’t need help like he did at first. He never ever wants that situation again, for the record. When he gets out, drying himself with a towel would be a little harder, which is why he’s taken to using a spell instead, one meant as a magical blow dryer but slightly modified. He’s very proud of himself for making that one work, actually, even if it is a little much when hot air is blowing directly into his face. 

Unlike a blow dryer, the spell is mostly silent, which is why Quentin can hear his door opening, and the gentle thump of a cane against linoleum that is the telltale sign of Eliot coming in. A moment later, he hears his voice too. 

“No, Margo, I’m not -” 

Silence, during which Quentin balances a little precariously with one hand on another handrail while he pulls his underwear and jeans over his hips. 

“I told you, I’m out here for the long haul, and I’m not sure I want to go back to Fillory anyway!” Eliot is saying when Quentin sits down to pull his shirt on and run a brush through his hair. Quentin freezes in surprise, holding his breath as he hears Eliot continue, “Of course I care about it but I was pretty damn decisively voted out. Isn’t one ex-High King trying to get reinstated drama enough?”

Margo must say something else as Quentin settles his crutches, but whatever it was he can’t possibly guess, because Eliot’s only response is, “I’ll talk to you later, Margo,” and then muttered curses at, presumably, his phone post hanging up. So that sounds a little worrying, and Quentin manages to get the bathroom door open without banging a crutch against it - yay, small victories - to say, “Hey, everything all right?” 

Eliot, who is sitting on the edge of Quentin’s bed, looks up with a sigh. “Just… difference of opinion with Margo.” 

“Yeah, I heard,” Quentin admits, because there’s really not much point in playing dumb. He settles on his bed too with his good leg tucked under his left thigh, leaning the crutches against the wall, and is only a little surprised when Eliot shifts so that his head is on Quentin’s leg-and-a-half. “That cannot be comfortable,” he comments, meaning both that and also the way Eliot has to lay with his knees up so that his legs actually, well, fit on the damn bed. 

“Let me steal a pillow and I’m good,” is all Eliot has to say, so Quentin gives him a pillow, tilting his head down so they can look at each other. 

“She wants me to go back to Fillory with her,” Eliot says.

And, well. This is not exactly news, is it? “No surprise there, she was talking about it before you even woke up. You - aren’t you going to?” At the baleful look Eliot gives him, he quickly adds, “I know, you’re here with me as long as I need, I meant, like, later. She said I could come visit, if you wanted to I’d go with you.” 

“Actually, she told me you could move in at Whitespire, she didn’t tell you because she doesn’t think you’d want to,” Eliot says, grabbing one of Quentin’s hands and sort of absently playing with it, twining Quentin’s fingers with his own first one way and then another. Quentin lets him - it’s a habit from their once and never lifetime and he finds it almost as soothing as Eliot does. “But while I appreciate your willingness to come with me, the thing is that I’m not sure I want to go back.” 

“But you love Fillory!” Quentin says, surprised. He can still remember -  _ “Fillory is my home,” _ and how clear it was that Eliot meant it, and he wonders… 

“I do. It saved me at a time when maybe nothing else would have worked. Who knows, now.” Eliot rests his own hand and Quentin’s on his chest, and Quentin can feel his heartbeat, a little faster than usual. “But I was pretty firmly kicked off my throne, and I’m not sure it’s somewhere I belong, anymore.”

Quentin, who understands that feeling all too well, squeezes Eliot’s hand. And when the melancholy look in his eyes doesn’t fade, Quentin threads his free hand into Eliot’s hair, stroking his fingers through it, playing with the curls. El didn’t slick it back today so Quentin knows it’s all right to do this. And Eliot leans into it, closing his eyes - he likes having his hair petted as much as Quentin does, Arielle once said they were both like human cats that way. “You don’t have to go back,” he says quietly. “Not if you don’t want to.” 

“And that’s just it. Maybe I’ll change my mind, maybe I won’t. But right now I don’t want to,” El says quietly, eyes still shut. “I’m not sure what I do want - or, well, the things I know I want aren’t about my future location, but whatever. Point is, while I’m not exactly decided on if I want to settle back in New York City or somewhere else entirely, I’d rather be Earth-bound than in Fillory just now.” 

Quentin - would actually really like to ask what it is Eliot does know he wants, these things that aren’t about location but are apparently important enough to both mention but not be specific about. But he doesn’t, not yet, because… He isn’t actually sure why. He just doesn’t. “If you don’t want to do it, then you shouldn’t. Do you want to go back to Brakebills? Jules said she and 23 got them, she figures I could get one too so I don’t see why you wouldn’t.” 

Maybe Eliot hears the distaste in Quentin’s voice, because he opens his eyes, skepticism written all over his face. “I hadn’t considered that but you sound oh so  _ thrilled _ at the prospect, Q. What’s up with that?” 

Quentin scoffs quietly. “Well - now don’t flip, OK? Fogg took my meds, first day at Brakebills. He spouted this shit about how I didn’t actually need them, my problem was that I subconsciously knew magic existed, not depression. Basically had me thinking tossing the meds was a prerequisite to attend. I found out different when I got here but apparently a lot of people buy this stuff?” 

Eliot takes a deep breath. Then a second one. “No. I am not going back to Brakebills, because if I see Henry Fogg again I am going to beat the shit out of him and that doesn’t seem conducive to being his student.” 

“That seems -” 

“If you say that seems excessive I will  _ shake you _ . Quentin, you have diagnosed depression and we have been through hell in the past four years. And, sweetheart, you're the one who told me that you almost killed yourself, so frankly I don’t think an excessive response is possible.” Eliot pauses, considering. “Well, since you're alive, actually killing him would probably be a bit much.”

_ Homicide would be a bit much anyway _ , Quentin means to say, but he’s a little distracted by Eliot calling him sweetheart. “I didn’t want to go back anyway,” he says instead. “Knowing that makes me uncomfortable, because I have no intention of dropping my meds again. Truthfully, I wasn’t thinking much past getting to the stage of being able to walk again.”

Eliot hums, closing his eyes again as Quentin keeps playing with his hair. “I’m good with not thinking much past that stage either. I don’t  _ have  _ to rush to do anything, and it gives us both time to think.”

Quentin doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He’s thinking about the chat he had with David, and irritated by the sudden flash of nerves. Eliot hasn’t asked to come to any of Quentin’s sessions, which means Quentin has to basically bring it up out of nowhere. “Hey, El?” 

“Hmm?” 

“Uh… David says he’s gonna put me on the temporary prosthetic tomorrow, to start working on learning to walk with one. I, he said, um, that you could sit in. Like, if you want.” 

Eliot’s eyes fly open, his grip on Quentin’s hand tightening. “Do you want me to?” he asks, and his voice is - careful. That’s the best word for it. Somehow, the fact that Eliot thinks he needs to be careful with him wipes away Quentin’s nerves. 

“Yeah. I’m - I asked David if you could come,” he says with a smile. “I want you there.” 

“Then I’ll be there. What time?” 

It’s that easy, apparently. Which is how the next afternoon, David is fitting the temporary leg onto Quentin’s stump and Eliot is sitting nearby, watching. Quentin can feel his gaze even as he focuses on listening to David’s directions about taking the leg on and off - donning and doffing, apparently, are the proper words for this, and who knew there were proper words? - and about taking those first steps. 

Maybe it should make Quentin nervous or uncomfortable, to feel Eliot watching him. But it doesn’t, it never has. Instead, he looks over as David helps him to stand, a little smile on his face. Eliot smiles back, giving him an entirely too-blatant once over that reminds Quentin a little of their first meeting. Only this time it’s all an act, because Eliot winks after and Quentin has to laugh. 

“Yeah, yeah, you two can flirt later, you’ve got work to do, Q,” David says, and Quentin’s ears heat up. Oh well, his hair is long enough now that it’ll mostly hide how red he’s sure they’ve gone. 

He’s used the parallel bars before, of course. Some of his exercises for strengthening his arms had involved levering himself down them, much like how he’s learned to walk with crutches. But this is… different. Even just standing still it’s different, because he’s used to feeling the ground, the pressure of his body, in his feet. Now he feels it in one foot and in a place just below his knee, which is actually stranger than feeling nothing at all, somehow. 

David showed him how to move his legs, the best starter gait, he’d said, but Quentin… he can’t seem to make himself take that first step, his hands tight on the bars. He wants this. He’s wanted this since he decided to go off to rehab, what the fuck is wrong with him? 

“Q?” Eliot’s quiet prompting is accompanied by the lightest brush over his hair and down his neck, the gossamer silk touch of telekinesis. Quentin takes a breath - and he hadn’t noticed until now that he wasn’t breathing - and he looks over at Eliot, who is watching him steadily. Only a slight wave of his fingers even indicates what he’s doing, power skimming over Quentin’s skin not to tease - like in a life they never lived - but to calm him, an anchor in the sudden fear. 

_ I know you want to do this on your own, but I’m here, _ this more subtle comfort says. And it’s - somehow, it’s exactly what Quentin needs. Somehow, Eliot always is, one way or another. 

Quentin takes another breath, and takes his first new steps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know, they're clueless idiots, they were supposed to confess this chapter and then they wouldn't.
> 
> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter!


	4. Maybe Years From Now (Or Tomorrow Night)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Quentin and Eliot start looking into more consequences of the blast, Julia learns what she didn't know about the situation, and things between our boys shift again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning in this chapter for brief discussion of suicide attempts and a near-fatal drowning accident.
> 
> Also, finishing this up tonight was absolutely powered by the s5 trailer dropping. I won't be watching, I hope those of you who are will enjoy it, but you won't need it for my fics if you feel like I do. :)
> 
> As ever, love and thanks to my enablers (especially Maii who always reads over my drafts)!

“I think I can sense magic now.”

It takes Eliot a moment to register the words. They’ve been watching a movie on Quentin’s Kindle tablet - the… second Hobbit movie, he thinks, and he mostly checked out after admiring the tall blond king’s wardrobe and briefly lamenting that he couldn’t steal that look for himself, not being a High King anymore. Quentin had laughed and said there was always Halloween, which is true. Now the blond guy from BBC Sherlock is trying to not get barbecued by a dragon - Quentin says the dragon is voiced by Sherlock from BBC Sherlock, which is kinda trippy - and Quentin has just said he can sense magic. 

Right. Eliot taps the screen, pausing the movie. “You can sense magic?” he echoes, eyeing Quentin, who looks at him sheepishly. 

“I think so, yeah. I started noticing before you got here, that I thought I could. It’s a little like… So, OK, this is gonna sound weird and maybe a little crazy but my mending, right? I can… it feels like the broken pieces themselves tell me what to do? Like, they want to be fixed, they want to be reminded of what they used to be, brought back to that. And it’s sort of similar, I can sort of hear the magic, only instead of directions it’s more like  _ hi I’m here _ and maybe sometimes  _ hi I’m here and I’m a spell to do so-and-so. _ That sounds batshit crazy, doesn’t it?” 

Actually, it doesn’t. Eliot’s own magic is a thrum of energy forever at his fingertips, a spark in his blood that never goes away. But he knows that for some people it’s different - in his first year, he hooked up with a naturalist kid who said it was like the plants told him the best way to make them grow, and he knows that healers talk about ‘listening to the body’ with their magic. Mending sort of straddles the line between physical and healing, so it makes sense. And if Quentin’s power has somehow been altered, then it also makes sense that the changes would still follow a similar pattern to Quentin’s existing magic. 

“No, not crazy at all. I am a little concerned by the whole sensing magic thing, though. Didn’t you say you had seizures for a couple days right after the Seam?” 

“Yeah,” Quentin says, casual like this doesn’t bother him at all. That sets Eliot’s teeth on edge, but he supposes he can’t actually blame Quentin - he doesn’t remember those seizures, being unconscious at the time, so they probably don’t seem like a real thing that happened to him. “At least, Lipson and Julia said so,” Quentin continues. “You think it’s a sign I didn’t disconnect all the way?” 

“I think it could be,” Eliot says, reaching over to brush a bit of hair out of Quentin’s eyes. They still haven’t discussed what they are to each other, but they’re lying tucked together in Quentin’s bed, they act basically like they did when they were married, so there’s that. “And I want to talk to the healers here about it, to make sure. It can’t be safe to still be linked in, if that’s what’s happening.” 

“I mean, it could be useful -” 

“Quentin,” Eliot cuts him off, pulling away enough to get a better look at Quentin’s face. “Not if it’s dangerous. If you’re linked to the ambient, you could pull too much in - the surges are dangerous enough, when I was still at the Brakebills infirmary I heard of two cases of people Niffining out because they were casting when a surge hit, and one kid was brought in on my way out that only just managed to not Niffin out. He was a mess, though.” 

“I can sense them too,” Quentin admits softly. “The surges. My skin feels… too tight, like when you sit too close to a heater or an open fire. I woke up feeling that a few times. Had weird-ass dreams too.”

“Dreams?” He shouldn’t be worried, maybe, but something about it makes Eliot feel very unsettled. Especially when Quentin squirms and ducks his head. His hair is still short, but his floppy bangs are long enough now to shield his eyes. 

“I don’t know, I can’t explain them. I dream of the sparks, you know? But there’s… a shape in them that looks like me, and people around a bonfire that I think is our group only I’m… watching, I’m not with you all. I don’t know. It creeps me out. It feels - almost like I’m seeing something that could have happened? Or, or maybe it did happen somewhere else?” 

Eliot tightens the arm he has wrapped around Quentin, because it sounds a little like that to him as well. He’s not sure what the fuck a bonfire has to do with anything, but the outline in the sparks… He doesn’t like it, he knows that much, and it makes him need to confirm that Quentin is here with him, alive and mostly well. “I  _ really  _ don’t like the sound of that, and it’s making me think all the more that you need to be checked for links to the ambient.” 

“Yay, more tests,” Quentin says very dryly, and Eliot understands. They’re trying to fit Quentin for a long-term prosthetic right now, but they’re having some trouble. Mostly that every prosthetic they tried so far made his stump burn, and they haven’t been able to figure out why. Except… 

“Hang on. Every leg they’ve tried you with has spells on it, doesn’t it?” Eliot asks, sitting up abruptly and inadvertently pulling Quentin with him, who yelps a little at the change in position. 

“Uh, yeah. Basic ones to repel dirt and make them less likely to break, I think that’s all?” 

“Quentin. What if it’s all connected? Your new sensitivity to magic, what if it’s causing the way you seem to be basically allergic to everything they try, not to mention these dreams of yours?” 

Quentin blinks once, twice. “Well, shit.” He seems to hesitate, reaching for Eliot’s hand and playing absently with how their fingers can twine together. Eliot recognizes the habit from the life they never lived, one of the fidgets Quentin developed when he was gathering his thoughts. 

_ “Am I your worry stone now, Q?”  _

_ “I’ve never actually used a worry stone - I can stop if you want?”  _

_ “No, no, it’s fine, it’s cute.”  _

_ “El, I’m thirty-seven, that’s too old to be cute.”  _

_ “It really isn’t.”  _

“I think maybe what happened to me is something new,” Quentin says, drawing Eliot from the memory. “Like - probably people have escaped their own backfiring magic in the Mirror Realm, but with Everett, and all the magic he’d stolen from, from Earth and probably Fillory and who the fuck knows where else… I don’t know. It’s messy, whatever it is.” 

“Well, messy is the state of our lives for the past few years. You’re probably right but I still think the healers here might be able to do something, make sure you’re safe.”

Quentin hums, still playing with Eliot’s hand. “Do you think safe is a thing we can actually have, long-term? Here, I mean.”

Given the past few years, it’s a fair question. And there’s really two true answers to it. One is that Eliot simply doesn’t know. The other is that he’s kind of ready to burn down everything if it’s what it takes to get that safety. He doesn’t think Quentin would approve of the latter, though. Margo would, and that thought hurts because they didn’t leave things on great terms and he’s really not looking forward to talking to her about Quentin and more about Fillory and… well,  _ them _ , probably, what their friendship is now.

“I’m not sure, but that’s no reason not to take care of the risks we can find,” is what he finally says. “Like when I had to teach you how to weed, remember?” Eliot adds that cautiously, because they’ve talked around the Mosaic, they’ve referenced it without specifically saying so, and they’re acting like they did then half the time, but they haven’t - talked about it.

“I remember,” Quentin says, looking up at Eliot through his bangs, a strange half-smile on his lips. “Or, or sanding down every rough or sharp corner in the house.” Because of Teddy, is the unspoken addition to that sentence, looming between them. 

“Exactly like that,” Eliot says.  _ I can’t risk losing you, especially when we can actually  _ ** _do _ ** _ something about it, _ he doesn’t say. He can’t shake the thought of Quentin’s dream, and the awful sense of wrongness it gives him. Quentin seems more unsettled than horrified by it, curious in a watching-a-trainwreck sort of way; Eliot personally hopes that whatever they are, the healers figure out a way to banish them forever. “So, we’re talking to the healers about this. Or, you are, I won’t necessarily -” 

“No, I think  _ we  _ are,” Quentin cuts him off, an odd look on his face. He seems about to ask a question, but then he doesn’t.

They can’t do this forever, can they? Eliot would have been content to - not ideal, but good enough. But he’s really starting to think they can’t. The question is, how to bring it up?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“The thing is, I don’t see anything that would put you at risk, but there’s definitely something there,” Dr. Trieste says, taking off the blue-lensed glasses she’d been peering at Quentin through and setting them aside. “Now, I’m sorry if this is difficult, but can you run me through the circumstances properly? I just want to make sure I understand. Your file has the basics, but from what I read I noted that Lipson’s information was second and thirdhand?” 

Quentin nods, and he finds himself reaching for Eliot’s hand. He doesn’t have to tell her about the part where he almost didn’t run, he knows that. But he has to remember that part to think about the rest of it, and it’s - Eliot’s hand in his is familiar, the same large warm palm, slightly rough, from this life and another and Quentin likes to think in thirty-nine lives he can’t remember he’d still recognize Eliot’s hand in his. He explains the relevant bits - Everett’s magic hoarding, him showing up at the Seam, Quentin’s mending spell that exploded and took Everett with it. 

“Julia said that Penny told her Everett, um, he sort of liquefied? Like, he turned into the water he’d stored the magic as, and then the water blew up like my spell did. I was a little too busy running to see it, but that’s what I was told.” 

“So the blast, which then spilled magic out of the Mirror Realm and back where it came from, included all of this guy’s stolen magic, as well as his personal magic and some of yours. What kind of other spells had you performed recently, besides that cooperative cast they had everyone and their brother doing?” 

Quentin is distracted briefly by the implication that Dr. Trieste was one of the people casting the incorporate bond to trap the Monster, and for a moment he has a flash of looking down at hands wearing the same silver rings as she is, moving through the tuts. Weird. “Um, I cast the incorporate bond before, powered by some of that water. Before that… a timeshare spell. It swapped my consciousness with that of my previous self, I had to talk to someone.” 

“Shit, time magic? That stuff lingers, especially with a psychic magic component. I can’t be completely certain this long after, but I’d guess that traces of time and psychic magic were in that blast too, especially since it… It took your leg, so it took your blood. Magic and blood are… well, you’re classical magicians, you don’t know much about that.” 

“So explain it to us,” Eliot says, and when Quentin looks at him his eyes are narrowed. “Magic can run in families, so obviously there’s a genetic predisposition, but magic comes from pain -” 

“Mm. Yes and no. Pain is… usually what triggers magic, especially in first-gen classicals or hedges, yeah. Really, any strong emotion could do it, any strong emotion can power magic once you have it, but pain is the one that usually triggers the need for a defense, which magic fills admirably.” 

Eliot’s hand tightens on Quentin’s and Quentin remembers a story involving a childhood bully and a schoolbus. He holds on a little tighter, rubbing his thumb over Eliot’s knuckles, a small gesture but something. “But, blood?” Quentin prompts. 

Dr. Trieste shrugs. “Well, after that, magic’s active in your blood. After a couple generations, kids come up magic even if their lives have been as rosy as possible. Sometimes sooner - that’s a fifty-fifty chance, but by the point of great-grandkids it’s usually all of them with magic. But the key point with you is, you triggered the blast, and it took a part of you with it. So your magic was very much in there.”

“What does that mean?” Eliot asks, impatient. 

“Well, frankly, in some ways I don’t know. I can say there’s nothing particularly dangerous about the situation - there’s nothing indicating a connection to the ambient that would cause a magic overload.” Quentin can feel some of the tension in Eliot easing at that, just through their clasped hands. He feels bad, suddenly - Eliot had really been worried, while Quentin himself… The thing is, a lot of it feels vaguely unreal. He doesn’t remember the seizures, the dreams are creepy and weird but creepy and weird is just part of life sometimes now. 

The only thing that Quentin isn’t a little  _ detached  _ from is the sensing magic thing, and he kind of likes that. It doesn’t feel dangerous. Which is odd, considering that magic is a bitch, but… “Most of the magic, when I sense it, it’s… None of it’s like mending, mending feels like part of me, but when I do a mending spell it’s like the thing I’m mending tells me how to fix it? Most of the magic I sense, it’s… some of it tells me what it is, a lot of it is more just sort of, um, announcing its presence, but it all feels… friendly, or at least neutral.” 

“Well,” Dr. Trieste says, “you are currently in a facility where most of the magic being done is either for healing or crafting. Those tend to be kinder magics, as magic goes. You’ll probably have more varied experiences once you leave, especially if you intend to go back to that school of yours.” 

Quentin has a brief moment of wondering what dealing with the Monster would have been like with this magic sense, and then shuts down that line of thought as more awful than he wants to contemplate just now. Although, since it’s not dangerous, he can’t help thinking that it might have been useful for any number of things in the past few years. Hell, even just now, knowing when a surge is coming could be a very good thing.

“I’m not going back to Brakebills, so that’s one down,” he says. 

“Anything else we need to know?” Eliot asks, and he’s still frowning, still suspicious. And Quentin - somehow, he promptly forgets about the actual conversation they’re having because… Here’s the thing. Loving Eliot is a thing that hurts. That has just been a fact of this lifetime since Quentin realized how he felt, in that moment of racing across the room to throw himself at his best friend who was miraculously not dead and realizing  _ oh shit I’m in love with you _ as Eliot caught him up. It stung, then, guilt because of Alice and kicking himself because he did this with Julia, how could he let it happen again. 

And after the throne room, it became an ache, constant, a pain he learned to tolerate. The Monster made it one more torment, and since that ended it’s been the ache again. But it - it had mattered more than anything to trust Eliot again, to have him there when Quentin started walking again. Only it, it would have still - if they’d never been anything other than best friends he would have still wanted - 

It’s this. Eliot suspicious and questioning for him, trying to find out how to help him, to keep him safe - Quentin’s heart turns over in his chest. It, it doesn’t hurt anymore. He isn’t sure what it is doing, he feels sort of unmoored and strange, but the hurt is gone.

“No, that should be it for now,” Dr. Trieste says. Quentin barely hears her. He’s too busy turning over this revelation in his head. Part of him wants to take it to Dr. Barlow in his next session, wants to talk it out and analyze it until he understands just why this moment flipped the switch. Part of him wants to guard it like a secret, until he figures out how to tell Eliot. Because he is going to, isn’t he? He swore he wouldn’t, that he’d never bring it up again, but… But Eliot came out here, for him. And even Quentin’s not-quite-accusations hadn’t chased him away. Hell, Quentin’s last fumbled attempt to ask Eliot to be with him hadn’t chased Eliot away. 

He forces himself to focus in physical therapy that day - mostly because Eliot isn’t there today, he’s ducked through the portal back to Brakebills because he wants to check on something. Quentin isn’t worried that he won’t come back, he’s just glad that when he’s done his session he’ll be alone for a while. 

“You’re in a strange mood today,” David says as Quentin practices walking around the room with a walker. Once he has a prosthetic fitted to him, David says, he ought to be able to graduate to a cane. 

“I know,” Quentin says, and he doesn’t even get mad when, during his occupational session, he can’t quite balance long enough on the temp leg and his own to get things in the highest practice cabinet. He’s a little distracted, too, by the sense of magic in the room. He thinks if he focuses he can pick out the different kinds, make it more than a shiver up his spine, a whisper of presence. 

But that should probably wait until he can walk more reliably, really. 

Maybe other things should wait until then too. But he’s not so sure of that. At least he’ll have a little time to think about it? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Lipson hadn’t been impressed when Eliot had walked out of the utility closet across from her office, but she hadn’t commented either, to his relief. He’s starting to like her, a little - her bedside manner is a disaster but she hadn’t tried to stop him from going to see Quentin. Just advised him to call first, and warned him that if he was too distracting, her old classmate who ran the place would probably hear of it, and he didn’t want that.

Eliot hasn’t gotten an invite back to Brakebills yet, and he’ll reject it if and when he does. But he learned a long time ago that as long as you look like you belong somewhere, it’s rare that anyone works up the nerve to challenge that. So he makes his way across campus as if he’s still king of the Physical Kids’ Cottage. Well, more or less; the cane is a difference but his leg will cramp up at the most inopportune moments, so for now he’s still carrying it. For one thing, Quentin would be very, very quick to point out the hypocrisy of Eliot not taking care when he is so intent on making sure Q does. For another, Eliot himself is actively trying to do the whole “live healthier” thing. Sort of. 

Still, he can pull off the former-self vibes when he needs to. And as expected, no one stops him. A few people recognize him, he’s pretty sure, but that may only help. 

Research has never been Eliot’s thing when other options would do, but he’s nervous. He believes the doctor when she says that she can’t find anything dangerous about what’s happening with Quentin, but he also knows Quentin. Q loves magic, in spite of everything, he’s definitely going to want to explore this, and if he’s going to do that, then Eliot wants some kind of defense in place. 

He’s got a few books and is settled at a table in the section on ways to detect and identify magic when he hears footsteps behind him. He looks up and is surprised to find Julia standing there. 

Now, the thing is that Eliot has mostly tried not to have much of an opinion on Julia. He’s been willing to concede that by and large he’s either seen her at her worst or not interacted much, and that there’s a much better side he mostly only knows through Quentin’s stories of growing up with her. But after all he remembers from the shit that happened while the Monster was wearing him like a cheap suit, after everything Quentin said when he first got to San Diego… 

Well. He’s not quite in the mood for fairness. “So, you’re back in the States, I see. Q said you were in London?” he asks, with a cool Ice King bitch-smile. Julia raises her eyebrows. 

“I was, then in Amsterdam. I’m making progress, but why do I have the feeling you aren’t asking about that?” 

“Oh, probably because I’m not. Find time to call Quentin in all your wandering?” 

“We talk once a week, not that it’s really any of your business.” 

Technically, Eliot supposes she’s right. Officially speaking the only claim he has on Quentin is one of friendship, but even if that’s all he was - Eliot would be protective of him right now, angry on his behalf for how he’d been shipped off. “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,” he says instead, leaning back in his chair like it’s the throne he no longer has, “but Quentin is, and I’m the one who actually made the fucking time to be out there with him, so I’m  _ making  _ it my business.” 

Julia crosses her arms. “He mentioned you came out to visit. I didn’t know you were staying out there with him. They allow that?” 

“I’m staying in a hotel down the street,” Eliot informs her. “They actually make arrangements for people to stay in the area, because most people want to support their loved ones in a rough time, you know?”

Julia frowns. “Quentin doesn’t need a babysitter.” She sounds irritated but also confused, and Eliot - he can’t believe this. He can’t fucking believe it. 

“He  _ needed  _ to know he wasn’t alone,” he snaps, belatedly remembering that they are in a library and he probably ought to at least try to keep his voice down. But it’s hard, when he remembers Quentin shaking in his arms, remembers Quentin confessing that he’d almost killed himself, that he’d spiraled into the dark and no one noticed. Julia didn’t notice, when she’s known Quentin since they were four years old. 

“He knows -” 

“No, he doesn’t,” Eliot hisses. “When I got there, he was expecting to be told we didn’t want him back because he wasn’t  _ useful _ anymore. He felt like he’d been shipped across the country so he could be out of the way.” 

“He never said -” 

Eliot pushes to his feet, one hand white-knuckled around his cane. “Of course he didn’t say, because he spent months spiraling, Julia, and no one fucking noticed. You saw that thing almost strangle him, you heard him dare it to kill him, why the hell did you not -” 

“He said he was bluffing,” Julia snaps, voice low but furious. “I’m not a mind reader.” 

“No, but your boyfriend is. He was still too thin when I got to San Diego, how bad must he have been while I was gone? He almost didn’t run from the blast at all in the Mirror Realm, do you understand that? He almost died, and no one would have seen how bad he was getting until it was too late.”   
  


Eliot thinks of Quentin’s dream again, the outline in the sparks, the campfire with shadowed figures, and a shiver runs down his spine. He thinks of the fear when he didn’t know where Quentin was, imagines what it would have been if - 

Quentin almost died in their second year at the Mosaic. A stupid accident when they’d taken a break to go swimming. He hadn’t been breathing when Eliot dragged him out of the water. He’ll never forget how still Quentin was as Eliot tried to force the water out of his lungs and air back in, dizzily grateful for the year he’d taken a job lifeguarding at the pool two towns over because it got him out of the house.

Eliot will never forget the devastating fear of it when Quentin didn’t respond immediately, the looming grief just waiting to crash down and shatter him, or the equally overwhelming relief when Quentin started breathing again. 

(There’d been another incident too, and the tacky feeling of Quentin’s blood drying on his skin, Quentin’s brown eyes dazed with the loss of blood, but Eliot tries to bury that one - can’t bury it, but he did bury the knife he’d taken from Quentin’s shaking fingers.)

If he had come back to - but it doesn’t bear thinking about. He didn’t come back to Quentin’s grave, and thank whatever deity wants to take the credit, Eliot doesn’t care, he’ll give it if they want. “We almost lost him,” he tells Julia, voice flat. _ I almost lost him, _ he doesn’t say, because Julia isn’t the first person who should hear anything that pointed from him. “How the hell did you not see it, huh?”

Probably, he should ease up in the wake of the sudden horror on her face. That would be the nice thing, the - what the fuck was it he’d said before? Oh yes, _ “we’re emotionally advanced.” _ Thing is, Eliot isn’t  _ feeling  _ particularly emotionally advanced just now. “Well? You’ve known him since the two of you were four years old, how the fuck did you not see it?” 

“Oh fuck you,” Julia hisses. “You - you have no idea how fucked up shit was, all right?” 

“You mean you wanted your magic back and that mattered more.” 

“Yes, I wanted my magic back. Because I was defenseless. Yes, I was personally indestructible, but there was only so much I could do with the human shield option. That thing was killing gods and it had Quentin on puppet strings from the second he realized you were still alive, and I needed to do something. But I couldn’t without being at least a magician again, even if getting my godhead back was impossible. And at the worst of it, I was possessed too, remember?”

Eliot does not really know Julia Wicker well enough to be sure she’s telling the truth. In a different world, a mildly kinder one where no Chatwins meddled in their lives, he probably would know her better - or following at Julia’s side like he’d done all his life would have kept Quentin away from Eliot too. But Eliot doesn’t think that would have happened, somehow. He doesn’t know if they would have all been friends, but… 

They would have known each other better.

“I remember,” Eliot says, and there’s a shadowy half-instinct there, fear and hurt and affection all at once, that makes him want to go easy on her. But that doesn’t come from him at all. “But you weren’t before he left for the Seam, were you? Even I wasn’t, by then. But you were awake and ambulatory, you saw him leave.” 

Quentin said as much one of the times he’s talked to Eliot about it, said that not saying a proper goodbye to Julia is one of the reasons he ran after all. She saw him right before. “But you were too busy brooding to think, hey, maybe I shouldn’t let my friend who I’ve already seen dare a Monster to strangle him go to a place where a fucking minor mending spell could kill him.” 

“I didn’t think he’d cast -” 

“No, no one did, but he _ didn’t need to go _ at all,” Eliot snaps. “I just don’t see how you missed -” 

“He’s different, all right?” Julia says, throwing up her hands. Her fingertips spark, and she lowers them quickly. Eliot raises his eyebrows, but says nothing. “Look, when we were teenagers and all this started, when Q had a goal that was a good thing. Even if it was… finishing his latest oneshot fanfic or meta post or whatever, after Fillory really became his touchstone. As long as he had a goal, he was getting through, you know? It was when he stopped trying that it wasn’t good, that was when it was dangerous.” 

Julia sinks into one of the table’s other chairs, and Eliot feels kind of ridiculous looming over her, so he sits back down too. She doesn’t look at him, stares at her hands on the table. “I knew he wasn’t OK, of course I knew. You mean the world to him, he wanted you back, and that thing screwing with him while looking like you was not helping.” She looks up at Eliot then. “I don’t know what you two are, and I haven’t asked for any number of reasons. Some of which are fair and some are bitchy, I’ll admit it. But I thought - I was working on the Q rules I’ve always known. I was ready for him to crash afterwards, I expected that. I thought I could help him then.” 

“Why wait?” Eliot asks, horrified. “Why let him hit bottom first?”

Julia sighs. “Because I didn’t think I could stop him. Not short of… drugging his coffee or something to knock him out for a while. He wouldn’t listen to me. I thought once this was all over he’d stop enough to listen.” 

Eliot has nothing to say to that.  _ I would have found something _ , he wants to say, but, well, the last time Quentin tried to do a self-destructive thing Eliot went straight to stopping him with blunt force, rather than keep trying to talk him out of it. “So why ship him off?” 

“I wanted to help. I thought - you know he hates seeming helpless. I thought he’d hate having his friends watch him struggle, and I was afraid if he didn’t get help right away he’d spiral.” Julia shakes her head. “Look, maybe I read things wrong. But I was doing what I thought would help him, all right? I don’t know what else you want me to say.” 

Eliot doesn’t know either, really. But he’s said what he needed to say, Julia knows what’s going on now, and maybe that’s the best they can hope for. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin remembers how unenthused he’d been by the journaling idea, when Dr. Barlow had suggested it. His fingers even brush, briefly, over the enchanted journal, but this is obviously not something he wants to talk to Alice about. Still… 

** _How are things going with the prosthetic? Did they find one that will work on you? I’ll be busy the next few days but just leave a note?_ ** is the message left by Alice, and Quentin smiles a little. 

**Not yet, but there might have been a breakthrough. Also, need to run something by you when you have time. ** She might have ideas about the magic thing, it can’t hurt to get her input on it all.

They’re friends. He wants to be friends. That doesn’t mean… there are things not to be touched, yet, but he feels better for checking the journal, for leaving a note. Feels clearer, as he reaches for his more mundane journal. He considers texting Julia, but somehow… He doesn’t. He’d never told her how he felt about Eliot, and now doesn’t seem like the time to try and explain. He flips a pen over and under his fingers, and kind of wishes this were something he could get out in drawing. But it isn’t, and so....

I love him. That’s never been in question. I love him I’m in love with him and I have been to know it since he came back from the Neitherlands. I still remember that moment, I don’t think my feet fully hit the ground, the way I ran over to him. I love him and it’s always hurt, one way or another in this life it’s always always hurt. And I remember it not hurting, I remember marrying him under blue skies and autumn leaves, and how Teddy threw leaves over our heads. I remember growing old together and that first night, kissing him on the Mosaic and I was fucking terrified but then he kissed me back and then… 

Quentin pauses there, because it’s one thing to have written smutty fanfiction from time to time in high school and college, quite another to describe his own memories of that first night, under the stars by torchlight. The way Eliot pressed him down to the blanket and - right, OK, not the main point right now, if somewhat relevant. He’s in his twenties, male, not dead, and no longer a depression zombie, so yeah. He’s gonna think about it. But it’s not the main issue at hand. 

The thing is. The thing has always always been, I’m not willing to risk what I already have for something I might not be able to get. That was the thing with Julia for years, it’s the same problem with Eliot. Alice was different, we were friends but there was always the… option, it always felt like since we were both outsiders, the question of dating was always tangled in being friendly, the risk wasn’t there. And with Eliot, God knows I had a crush, but I never thought I had a chance in hell. That he - and Margo - were my friends felt impossible enough.

I don’t know what’s possible now. I can’t - Eliot told me no and then he sent me off to be someone else’s life partner but he cuddled me while he said it. And now we act so much like we did before, and he says he won’t leave and I believe him. I don’t think I can break this. I don’t think anything can break this, but it could still shift. Will I like what happens if it shifts?

The question is sort of what it’s always been. I love him, so what do I do about it?

What should he do about it? Quentin remembers, absently, a quote he read somewhere that went _ ‘If I love you, what business is that of yours?’ _ He’s always kind of liked it, he’d come across it in high school and while it didn’t quite fit the hopeless puppy pining he’d felt for Julia, in a way it had still comforted him. An idea that loving someone was valid even if they didn’t feel the same, even if they didn’t know. That, maybe, they didn’t need to know. 

Before the Mosaic and for that first year, he’d strictly applied that concept to his feelings for Eliot. After the throne room, he’d altered it to  _ ‘it’s not his business that I’m not over him’ _ , which was basically the same thing. He’d never meant to speak of it again, partly to respect that Eliot said no and partly so as to not fuck things up between them. Now that he truly thinks he can’t really fuck it up… 

It makes things an open question again, doesn’t it? And that’s a little terrifying because, OK. It had hurt to look at Eliot and think,  _ I can have his friendship but nothing else, _ but at least he’d known the rules of that. He isn’t sure he’s still the guy who, with nothing more than a cup or two of plum wine as liquid courage, was able to lean across the distance and kiss his best friend, explaining himself only with a shrug and a sheepish smile.

Note to self. Writing this all down doesn’t help actually solve it. Very unfair. 

Quentin’s cell phone rings then, and it’s Julia. Quentin stares at his phone in surprise for a moment, then picks up. “Hey, Julia, how’s London?” 

“Actually, I’m back in New York. I was at Brakebills earlier, ran into your boyfriend.” 

“I don’t have… do you mean you ran into Eliot?” Him saying that is a bit telling, isn’t it, but he can’t think who else she’d have meant.

“The fact that you denied having a boyfriend and still knew who I mean says a lot, doesn’t it, Q?” Julia says, but as far as he can tell through the slightly tinny speakers of a cell phone, she doesn’t sound angry. Just… tired, maybe.

“Do we have to talk about this?” Quentin says, eyeing his journal. 

“Well, it might have explained some things if I knew what he meant to you.” 

“Yeah, well, it’s not like you asked either,” Quentin says, the sharp words out of his mouth before he can think twice about it. And when he can think about it, he finds that he doesn’t want to take them back, or mitigate them. He didn’t exactly want Julia to ask at the time, for various reasons, but it hurts that she didn’t. It hurts that she didn’t notice he was sinking, didn’t see enough to wonder why. And he knows now that it’s not being unfair to be hurt. It’s not wrong to have wanted someone to fucking look twice at him. 

There’s silence on the other end but he can still hear Julia breathing, and finally Quentin sighs. “I’m not sure this is something we ought to drag up over the phone,” he says.

“I can’t come to San Diego right now, I’m on the trail of something that could be important for fixing me,” Julia says, and she actually sounds regretful. “But it should only take a couple days, and then I’ll talk to Penny. Look, Q, you’re right - this isn’t something we can talk about over the phone. But, like I said. I was talking to Eliot. Q… I wasn’t trying to send you away forever, all right? I just wanted you to get better, and that place seemed like the best one.” 

“Julia, you packed  _ everything I own _ , like I wasn’t coming back,” Quentin says, forgetting that he thinks these conversations ought to wait. 

“I - I just didn’t know how long it would - fuck. OK, we can’t do this like this. I’ll head out that way as soon as I can, but please, for now, just believe that I  _ never  _ meant you to think you couldn’t come home.”

Julia hangs up before Quentin can say he’s not sure the penthouse can ever be home. That’s semantics anyway, he knows what she meant. He’s a little pissed that she hung up on him, but the truth is, having this conversation over the phone is a recipe for a mess so it’s probably just as well. Still, it’s nice to know that at least some of what’s had him so upset is probably a miscommunication. Preventing more of those is one good reason to wait and talk in person, he knows. 

He closes his journal and flops back on his bed, frowning absently at the ceiling. What a weird fucking day, and he still doesn’t know what to do about Eliot. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


By the time Eliot gets back to San Diego, after narrowing down the books to five, visiting hours are over. He’s been doing his best to obey those so as to store up some goodwill with the nursing staff, just in case. One of the things he’d learned in the process of becoming himself is that people are more willing to forgive things if they already like you. It’s not a lesson he consistently puts into practice but it’s not one he’s ever forgotten either. It got him through high school mostly safe from teachers and classmates alike, for one thing, kinda hard to forget something like that. 

[hey what the hell did you say to Julia?] is the message he finds on his phone when he settles in for the night. Exchanging new cell numbers had been one of the first things he and Quentin did once they settled into their… whatever one would call their current situation. Being weirdly platonically married, from Eliot’s perspective.

[nothing she didn’t deserve to hear. Why, did she call you?] Eliot types back, easing back to lie on his bed. He really wishes he could bring Q over here, there’s more space - though they make the bed at the clinic work.

[yeah it was weird. She says she’s coming to visit as soon as she can] 

As soon as she can? When would that be, in six months once she decided she had time? Eliot does not write that, because it wouldn’t be fair. But seriously, after all they’d talked about? [did she say why the wait?]

[she’s on the trail of something, but also she didn’t want to talk over the phone. Sounds important, not sure what I think. Anyway she said in a few days probably] 

A few days isn’t that bad, Eliot supposes. Might even be for the better, in some ways. He still doesn’t like it, though - if he’d fucked things up this badly with Margo he’d be racing to fix it. That thought stings, though, because things aren’t right with him and Margo either, really. He’s just not sure what to do about it. Maybe he should try and give Julia the benefit of the doubt - maybe she doesn’t know what to do in the same way he doesn’t, now that she understands the situation. 

He can try a little good faith for someone he knows Quentin loves, can’t he?

[well, you always have backup unless you kick me out of the room] he tells Quentin.

[you really wanna sit in on the mess this is likely to be? Jules and I haven’t hashed out shit in a long time so…] 

[I don’t see why not] 

Quentin sends back a shocked emoji and Eliot laughs. They keep texting for a while, lighthearted back and forth instead of talking about Julia, and t he next morning Eliot finds that he fell asleep with the phone in his hand, which honestly happens a lot. They do this a lot. It feels… 

Here’s the weirdest part. It feels almost… high-schoolish, somehow. Like the tentative teen romances in fiction, the kind of thing Eliot imagines some people really did experience - he observed some of his classmates experiencing it - but he never did because he never could. It feels like being fourteen or fifteen instead of twenty-seven. Wait, no, twenty-eight, sometimes he forgets he missed a birthday being either Nigel or a meatsuit, not quite sure which. But it feels like staying up late texting with the cute kid from algebra or something when they text like this. Watching things together on Quentin’s tablet feels like study night turned into a TV date. 

His younger brother had a few of those, when Eliot still lived in the house. His older two hadn’t been much for things like that, but Patrick… he’d been as ill-suited to the Waugh household as Eliot, but for different reasons. He knows, because he made the mistake of trusting Facebook privacy settings in undergrad, that Patrick took off just like he did. Andrew, his _ very favorite _ second eldest brother, had left a vicious little message about it. 

Hence why Eliot deleted all social media presence in his own name.

But Patrick’s reasons were easier to hide reasons in high school, when the people he wanted to bring home were parent-approved girls. He’d been… tender, is maybe the best word, careful with the girls he brought home and almost shy. 

Eliot, from a year and half seniority and a disdain born of bitterness, had rolled his eyes at the fumbling courtship dance. He’d thought, then, that a boy wanting other boys just didn’t work like that, couldn’t work like that. And he hadn’t wanted to admit even to himself that he wished it could. 

But the thing is, at the same time, where he and Quentin are right now is nothing like that. They wrap around each other like they did at the Mosaic, decades of closeness blurring together, an old married couple who are suddenly young men together again. And so here they are, somewhere between the boys they might have been, in a kinder world where they met sooner, and the men they grew to be in a life that never happened to these bodies.

And Eliot wants to get them out of this stasis, but he’s not sure how. Quentin trusts him again, shows it all the time, most stunningly in how he let Eliot be there the day he first tried walking on a prosthetic. Eliot knows he’ll never forget it, the way Quentin had frozen, and then looked at him, looked at him with nothing but trust, no shadows or wariness left in his eyes. The way it had felt to wrap his power around Quentin for, well, actually the first time in this life, so so gently in this case.

Eliot promised he’d be braver, yet here he is, afraid again to push. He just. He can’t forget that dark fear in Quentin’s eyes, when he’d said  _ “Tell me you’re here ‘cause you wanna be. _ ” He doesn’t want to put that back, and it’s irrational to think he will, but he just.

And of course, because it has always, always been Quentin making the first move, Eliot doesn’t have to figure out what to do. He finds Quentin later that morning after his usual session with Dr. Barlow, in the clinic’s courtyard. Eliot suspects there are expansion spells at work in this place, because from the outside the Ravenwood Clinic does not look big enough for a center courtyard garden this size. But it’s a nice place, and Quentin likes a bench under a maple tree. He’s sitting there now with his sketchbook, and Eliot gets close enough to see that the drawing is a familiar scene. Him and Margo, actually, back when they were rulers of the Cottage and not a fucked-up fairytale land, lounging in a nook and surveying their kingdom. 

Or, wait, no, that’s only part of it, the other half of the page is… Quentin and Julia, lying back with their heads leaned together, Eliot doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be looking at but apparently Quentin’s got a theme going here. 

He makes sure his cane thumps hard enough on the ground that Quentin looks up, and isn’t startled by him. “Oh, hey,” he says, and it’s his old smile, Eliot finally has him back to that. “You fell asleep on me last night.” 

“Payback for you crashing out on me three nights ago,” Eliot says, sitting next to Quentin and nudging him playfully. 

“Oh, is that so?” 

“Yep, Coldwater, that’s so. What are you and Julia looking at there?” 

Quentin laughs, tucking a bit of hair behind his ear. It’s starting to grow out again, and Eliot’s fingers itch to play with it. “Our map of Fillory that we drew on the underside of a table. What’s with the books - are those from Brakebills? Did you steal them?”

“Technically, I’m still considered on academic leave, which means I have library access,” Eliot says, shrugging. “Not that I’d hesitate to steal them if necessary. They’re for you, on magical detection and something called magic-twisting.” 

Quentin looks over at him then, closing his sketchbook. There’s something strange in his eyes, something that Eliot can’t quite recognize. It’s half familiar, but not quite, and he isn’t sure… “For me?” Quentin asks. “Is this about the thing with Dr. Trieste yesterday?” 

“Yeah, Q, it is. I know you. As soon as you think you can, which will probably be before you really should, you’re going to start poking at this new stuff, see what all you can do with it. I want to make sure you know what you’re doing, as much as possible, so here’s research for both of us.” 

Quentin looks down at his closed sketchbook for a long moment, long enough that Eliot’s starting to wonder if he’d overstepped, like he feared when he just showed up here. He watches Quentin’s hands, watches his right thumb rub over his left ring finger. And when Quentin looks up again, Eliot knows the look in his eyes. It’s the same look he last saw by torchlight under Fillorian stars, the moment before Quentin leaned forward and kissed him, sending Eliot’s world into a tailspin from which it has never truly recovered. 

“Eliot, can I ask you something?” 

Eliot blinks. That isn’t what he’d expected, but the answer is easy, at least. “Yeah, sure, Q. Anything.” 

Quentin takes a deep breath, eyes flicking to the books and then down to his hands again before he meets Eliot’s gaze squarely. “When you came out here, when you promised you’d be with me as long as I need you… Did you realize that I’m still in love with you?” 

And, in typical Quentin Coldwater fashion, he seems to ask it so naturally, taking that first step like he has no idea that he’s set Eliot’s entire world to spinning yet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter! 
> 
> (I share more fic previews on Twitter these days, lol.)


	5. Traveled All This Way For Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin and Eliot finally talk about feelings! 
> 
> Also, Quentin's recovery hits a new stage, Julia drops in, and the question of magical consequences continues to get more complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief warning for a dream description of Quentin's canon 4.13 fate; I think that's it for this chapter. 
> 
> As ever, all the love to my enablers, especially Maii for reading my draft. 
> 
> Again, I will not be watching season 5, so while this fic may eventually include tidbits I like if I hear about them, no knowledge of the new season will be required to read this story.

For the record, Quentin doesn’t  _ set out _ that day to confess his feelings to Eliot. He’d sort of worked his way up to knowing that, at some point, he would confess, but as per usual for him really, it wasn’t at all planned.

He has a session with Dr. Barlow early on the morning after Julia called him, and Julia ends up being the topic of discussion. Weirdly, Quentin barely mentions Eliot at all, even though he’d thought he would. It feels, though, like he’s said all he can in a therapy session about Eliot, and whatever happens next is going to be entirely on him. 

So he talks about Julia instead. “At least some of it was a misunderstanding - like, she thought she was helping me, it just didn’t work out that way. And that’s happened before, I can deal with that a little better, I think,” he says. 

“You’ve talked about that, her encouraging you to give up the Fillory books and focus on the real world, that her way of trying to help sometimes felt like she was judging you?” 

Quentin nods. “And, I know that she never meant it that way. Jules is just, she’s goal-oriented. She just is. So for her, if I just could focus enough on reality, I would learn to cope with it. I… don’t entirely work like that? Um, I mean, I kinda do now, but that’s also because mentally I’m like in my late seventies. Sort of. I don’t remember living every minute of it, a lot of it’s kinda soft-edged but I think… I think that it still affects me?” 

Dr. Barlow nods. “That would make sense. Memory is, in many ways, part illusion anyway. Your situation is extremely unusual, but there’s no reason it wouldn’t change you. Can you tell me what you think changed?” 

“I mean, we had a kid,” Quentin points out. “I had to be as functional as possible. So I sort of, um, locked in, instead. To the Mosaic, to doing the practical things Teddy needed or were my share of what Eliot and I split the work on, and I did that again this time. Locked into what needed doing, where before I used to crumble, when it got bad. Locking in used to be how I held off spirals, like sophomore year of college when I focused obsessively on finals and then afterwards almost downed a bottle of sleeping pills before Julia walked in on me. So, I  _ get  _ that she misunderstood things.”

He flips a pencil over and under his fingers, thoughtful. He doesn’t draw in here, had made it clear that he didn’t want to associate his art with therapy again. A coping mechanism, yeah, Quentin is self-aware enough at this point to guess he’s coping with his sketchbooks, but it’s a  _ him  _ thing, not a therapy tool. But he likes having something in his hands, and he usually ends up with one of Dr. Barlow’s pencils. 

“We don’t know each other like we used to,” he says finally, quietly. “And even when we were as close as we ever were, Jules… she always wanted to help, and I was grateful for that when I was clear-headed enough to be, but it wasn’t always the, the right help. Like, I don’t know. I needed my escapes, you know? Fillory, or now the different books I’m reading. Julia used to say I looked for secret doors, and she was right, fine, OK. I always was, because life felt so damned faded even at the best of times. But I was, usually, functioning. And I checked myself into inpatient twice, voluntarily, when I knew I  _ wasn’t  _ functioning. Like, I had a… It wasn’t perfect. Obviously. But I had a system that mostly worked, and I didn’t  _ need  _ to change it.” 

This is not entirely true. Quentin hadn’t been happy before Brakebills, not by any standards, much less hopes. But he doesn’t think, even now, that his depression had been the problem. Or, rather, it hadn’t been the root of the problem, it had just made things that much harder to figure out. 

Fogg had been wrong about so much he’d said that first day, but the idea that Quentin had known his life was off-kilter and that he needed something else had been more or less accurate. 

But Julia’s advice to give up the mental safe space of fiction and live entirely in the real world like an actual adult wouldn’t have helped him find a mundane version of change, if magic didn’t exist. At least, Quentin doesn’t think so. It’s hard to tell, now, when he is so different from the boy he’d been. 

“And you’re concerned that will happen again, if the two of you repair this situation?” Dr. Barlow prompts, and Quentin blinks, pulled from his thoughts. 

“No,” he says, thoughtful, realizing that it’s true. “Or, at least, um. I used to feel like, like I was doing something wrong because that shit didn’t help me. But I think. I think I… know myself now? Enough that I don’t know everything I  _ should  _ do, but I know what’s  _ not  _ right for me. I just don’t know how to feel about what happened these past months.” 

“You don’t have to know yet. You can tell her that. Honesty is more important than feeling a particular way, Quentin.”

Which, yes, all right, Quentin knows that, but it would be much more convenient to have his feelings sorted before Julia’s idea of “soon” materializes into “now”. 

He heads for the courtyard and his favorite bench after, his sketchbook and Kindle in a bag that is really more of a purse slung over his shoulder. It’s… mildly embarrassing, but the thing is it  _ works _ . He can wear his little bag like he does his messenger bag, his hands are free for his crutches, and he has his favorite ways to keep busy on hand.

Well, his favorite ways of keeping busy when he’s alone. 

He draws himself and Julia, and he draws Margo and Eliot, because he feels sometimes like they’re different remixes on the same song. Different ways of having a friend know you down to your bones, only - only - Quentin knows Eliot and Margo aren’t quite getting along these days. He suspects he’s part of why, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that. He and Julia have never figured out how to be what they were before magic, or what new thing to be since they both grew up when the other was looking away. 

Different remixes hitting similar discordant notes. There’s got to be some kind of… There’s got to be a place to fix it. Most people don’t know this, Quentin used to think he was imagining it because it wasn’t in his book or his lectures, but in an equal and opposite way to how most things have fracture or pressure points, mendings have repair points. He thinks now it’s just part of mending being his discipline, to know that. 

People aren’t objects, though. People are small, in, like, the sense of the universe, but they’re still not  _ objects _ . And yet Quentin thinks there’s gotta be something, something in the patterns of two kinds of best friendship that can maybe fix both of them. If there’s a repair point to be found, maybe? 

The thump of a cane, soft on grass, alerts Quentin to Eliot’s presence, and they mostly spend the next few minutes in easy, comfortable banter. It’s who they are now, somewhere between the friends of this lifetime and the husbands of a different one. So they sit together and banter back and forth, it’s easy and comfortable and there’s times Quentin thinks if this is all they have, now and always, it’ll be enough. More than enough. 

But then -

Eliot brought him books. This is not actually a completely new development. Eliot brought him a few novels during first year when Quentin was having a bad week; supposedly the previous occupant of Eliot’s room left them behind and Eliot never bothered to throw them out. Quentin’s always been a tad suspicious of that one, though he’d never asked. But this is different. 

“For me?” Quentin asks. “Is this about the thing with Dr. Trieste yesterday?” 

“Yeah, Q, it is. I know you. As soon as you think you can, which will probably be before you really should, you’re going to start poking at this new stuff, see what all you can do with it. I want to make sure you know what you’re doing, as much as possible, so here’s research for both of us.”

Quentin has to look away then, has to focus his gaze on his closed sketchbook. Eliot hates research, although he is more likely to read for a purpose than for fun. He jokes that he can’t read - nothing is further from the truth, but Quentin figured out a long time ago that reading for fun isn’t usually Eliot’s thing. He likes it when Quentin reads aloud, and he seems to find audiobooks amusing, but only a very few books can actually hold his attention for long if he’s trying to read for pleasure. So it’s not - out of character for Eliot to have turned to research, though normally Quentin would have expected him to look for a few more hands-on options first. 

But he didn’t, because he knows that this is what Quentin needs. And it’s - it isn’t - it’s such a small thing, compared to being with him to talk to the doctor, or at Quentin’s first walking session, or the fact that Eliot  _ came all the way out to San Diego to be with him _ in the first place.

It’s small, like the angle of torchlight on Eliot’s face in a life they never lived. So small a thing, in the scheme of it all. So small a thing, changing everything. Because Quentin hadn’t planned it, that night. He’d been holding the secret of his love close for over a year, by then. Through the weeks following his revelation and a year of working on the Mosaic together, waking up wrapped around each other because they’d cuddled in sleep. He’d kept it secret and safe inside, where it couldn’t be ruined by being told it wasn’t wanted, and he’d meant to keep it that way. 

But then the firelight had slanted red-gold across Eliot’s face, bringing out new shades in his eyes, and Quentin had been gone. Flat  _ gone _ . And here, now, Eliot coming back with books to help Quentin, Eliot being here with him while he learns to adjust to his new normal. Eliot, here, because he wants to be here. 

Quentin feels his world shift like it did that night, and he knows it has to be now.

“Eliot, can I ask you something?” 

“Yeah, sure, Q. Anything.” 

Quentin takes a deep breath. He looks at the books again, then down at his hands. Most days, he doesn’t miss the pressure of a ring, because this body doesn’t remember wearing one. Some days, it’s actually the heavier weight of Brian’s school ring he misses, because Brian had worn his only ring on his left ring finger like some echo of Quentin’s lost other life. Like he knew, somehow. 

Quentin doesn’t usually miss it. But today he does, his thumb rubbing over the place where a copper wedding band had rested for decades. 

“When you came out here, when you promised you’d be with me as long as I need you… Did you realize that I’m still in love with you?”

There. He’s said it. And the strange thing is how light Quentin feels, with the question out there. Because he trusts Eliot, he trusts him. Even a rejection won’t ruin them - it will  _ hurt _ , but it won’t break what they are. Not for real. Quentin believes that, so he can be honest - he can say it outright instead of hedging with  _ “why the fuck not?” _ and  _ “what if we gave it a shot?” _

And having enough faith to do that is worth it, whatever the outcome.

<><><>

  
  


_ Did you realize that I’m still in love with you?  _

The question echoes in Eliot’s mind as he stares at Quentin, head spinning. He can’t - can’t  _ think _ , he wasn’t ready for this, he was going to talk to Quentin when he was calm and collected and he’d planned out what he was going to say. But Quentin’s words have upended all of that, ringing in his ears along with his own declaration of months ago now. 

_ If I ever get out of here, Q, know that when I’m braver it’s because I learned it from you. _

Quentin is looking at him, hopeful like that day, open and offering everything, everything Eliot’s wanted and was too afraid to accept in this world, in the real world where things are messy and complicated and people like him don’t get to keep people like Q. Quentin is asking, and Eliot is left stunned, left shaken, and it’s that day all over again, isn’t it? 

And that’s it, isn’t it? A second chance to make a different choice.  _ That’s not me and that’s definitely not you _ , he’d said.  _ Not when we have a choice, _ he’d said. And he’d meant it - for Quentin, not for himself. Only now, with the clarity born of this time out here with Quentin, does he fully realize that Quentin would have taken it exactly the opposite way. So sure of his own affections, he would have thought it Eliot’s way of trying to avoid a blunt rejection. Or of calling him a confused straight boy, which, actually, Eliot  _ is  _ guilty of that second interpretation there. 

A second chance. A different choice. 

Quentin is still watching him, dark eyes steady, but there’s a tension in him now, a wariness. That’s not OK, Eliot has worked so hard to make sure that would never happen again, not in response to him. He has to answer, he has to speak, but it’s like the words are vanishing before he can grasp them, order them into something coherent. 

He reaches for Quentin’s hands, and Quentin lets him, their fingers tangling together as easily as ever. As easily as they have from the beginning, and how did Eliot miss it for so long? Only he hadn’t, it had been more that he hadn’t known what to do with it. He still doesn’t know what to do, but he knows what he wants. And if he and Quentin want the same things, then - then all he has to do is say so. 

Change the story from what he’d made of it, the last time he was faced with this question. 

“I didn’t know,” he says, voice hoarse, and that’s easy enough as a start, because it’s the truth. “I didn’t know - but I hoped.” Eliot watches that sink in, watches Quentin’s eyes narrow and then go wide. His hands shake a little in Eliot’s and that’s when Eliot realizes Quentin half-expected to be shot down again. And he did this anyway. 

It makes Eliot’s heart twist in his chest, it makes something inside him crack. And then the words come easily, like whatever it was  _ needed  _ to crack. “I hoped, because if you still did, then I hadn’t ruined things, not forever.” 

“Eliot -” 

“Hush, sweetheart. Let me say this. What I said that day in the throne room… It was bullshit. I was afraid. And when I’m afraid, I run away. I am so sorry for that - it’s literally the most repressed memory I have, it’s the one I had to face to break out that day. I hid from it, because I knew how much I’d hurt you, and because I knew I’d run away from something real. Something I was terrified of, because I was so sure it couldn’t last. Not for me, not in the real world.” 

“And now?” Quentin asks, voice soft. 

“And now, I’m still terrified. I’m not like you - you just threw yourself out there yet again, after how I reacted last time. I’m not brave in the same way, but I promised - not you, not exactly, a memory of you, that day, but I meant it for  _ you _ . I promised I’d be braver. And that’s why I came out here. I wanted to be with you, to be better for you, so that when I told you I’m in love with you, you’d know I meant it.” Eliot lets go of one of Quentin’s hands to reach up and brush floppy bangs out of those beautiful brown eyes. He doesn’t lower his hand after, skimming his fingers down Quentin’s cheek, watching him close his eyes and lean into the touch. 

He slides his hand down further, curls his fingers around the nape of Quentin’s neck, watches Quentin’s eyes fly open as he recognizes the familiar gesture. “I’m in love with you, Quentin,” Eliot says quietly. “So, no, I didn’t know you were still in love with me, but it’s the best news I could hear. And I want to be with you.”

Quentin’s lips part, but now he seems to be the one struck speechless, and, well - Eliot’s not a saint, and that’s practically an invitation. He leans in, kissing Quentin softly, deepening it when Quentin opens for him, presses closer. “Is that a yes?” Eliot whispers against Quentin’s lips when they draw back. 

“Yes,” Quentin says, and his eyes are wet. “But, also, this is a public courtyard.” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Eliot laughs, remembering jumping the embers at a harvest festival and then twining round each other in a corner, getting up to far more than kissing. He watches Quentin flush a dull red, and he knows his giddy smile is turning sly from the way Quentin squints suspiciously at him. He’d always suspected Quentin liked that part of it, the thrill of almost getting caught - which, Eliot is up for actually  _ being  _ watched, though he doesn’t think he wants anyone else watching if it’s Quentin. He’s never actually considered it before either way, but… No. No one else gets to see that, not when it’s Quentin.

It’s probably never going to come up, but it’s a difference that means something in Eliot’s head, anyway.

“No, it wouldn’t be,” Quentin agrees, pulling Eliot from his thoughts, “but, also, I can’t leave yet, because I’m a patient, and that feels like a special kind of awkward, El.” 

“Fair enough,” Eliot says with a huff of laughter, sitting back. Not for long, though; he wraps an arm around Quentin’s shoulders instead and smiles to himself when Quentin practically melts into his side, curling against him like a giant cat. “When you get out of here, though, all bets are off.”

“I’m pretty sure our friends will dump cold water on our heads if we get too handsy around them,” Quentin points out, and there’s a tension creeping back into him. Eliot isn’t certain, but he thinks he knows the cause. 

“Who says we’re going to live with them?” 

“We’re not?” 

“Well, we could, but we don’t have to, is all I’m saying.” 

Quentin is silent for a long moment, and Eliot rests his cheek on top of his head, Quentin’s soft hair catching a bit on his stubble. There are a few other people out here, like Aubrey The Outpatient who Q talks to about her tattoos - Eliot has a theory Quentin is considering ink, and he personally wouldn’t mind getting to see the results of that - or those weird twins and their brother who’s a patient here that they visit even though they all seem to hate each other. 

Eliot can’t remember how exactly he picked up these tidbits, but Aubrey looks over at them and winks in such a ridiculously exaggerated way that Eliot can only grin back. One of the twins, the dark-haired one, seems vaguely interested too, but then she gets sidetracked into what looks like a truly unpleasant argument with both of the other two. How exhausting.

“I think I’d rather we didn’t, if it’s all the same to you.” 

“Well, then we won’t.” 

“That simple?” Quentin asks, shifting back enough to meet Eliot’s eyes. Eliot smiles, reaching over to brush Quentin’s bangs out of his eyes. He’s trying to grow out his hair, and has reached an adorably shaggy stage. 

“That simple.” It isn’t, really - there’s a lot of logistics involved, from timing to checking listings to the question of how much Quentin will be able to move around when the time comes. Hell, how much  _ Eliot  _ will be able to move, because while his leg has improved, it doesn’t seem to want to keep doing that. Which leaves Eliot with an ankle that occasionally shoots pain up the rest of his leg and a knee that threatens to buckle a few times a week as if it’s trying to keep his life interesting. 

But the truth is, it  _ is  _ that simple, because they’re going to make it work. Anything less is unacceptable.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Maybe things should change more than they do. Common sense would probably suggest that they would, but the thing is, from Quentin’s perspective he and Eliot already were acting more or less like a couple. The biggest change is that cuddling includes kissing, now. A lot of kissing, although not as much as either of them would actually like because Quentin really, really doesn’t want to get carried away here, not while he’s a patient.

The thing is - the thing is, he might not be a patient, at least not one living here, for that much longer. 

“You’ve made excellent progress, I’m told,” Paula Ravenwood says when Quentin arrives in her office as scheduled, and he finds that her pale sharp eyes are less unnerving than they were when he arrived. It’s been five months by now, which he’d somehow failed to notice. Or had been trying not to notice. It’s a little of both really, if he’s being honest. 

But, honestly, holy shit, five months. He’s twenty-seven now, but his birthday had passed very quietly. Eliot had shown up with cupcakes - a bit of an in-joke, because Quentin had gotten Eliot cupcakes on his actual birthday back in first year - and he’d agreed to watch the extended version of  _ one  _ Lord of the Rings movie. Quentin had picked Fellowship because he fully intends to get Eliot to watch the other two eventually, so best to start with the first. 

“So they tell me,” Quentin says to Dr. Ravenwood, and he really wishes he’d asked Eliot to come, now. But it’s a thin line, figuring out what is doing things together and what is letting himself forget how to take care of himself. He knows how bad he got, now that he’s had time and healing to look back at it. He’s not sure exactly what will be best to keep him from getting that bad again - never  _ getting bad _ is a pipe dream but  _ less bad _ might not be - but he’s trying to figure it out. It seems to him that knowing he can handle things on his own by sometimes doing so is a good place to start.

“As I understand it, the only problem is that the usual spells on our prosthetics don’t work for you, you seem to be allergic somehow. Have they discussed your options on that?”

“Well, I met with Dr. Trieste a few days ago,” Quentin explains. “The problem is, the blast that caused my injuries has changed my magic. I have a… sixth sense for it now. Eliot, my partner,” and, shit, OK, it still doesn’t feel completely real to say aloud, his head spins a little with it. “He thinks that might be the problem, and David agreed yesterday when we explained it to him. David thinks, if I can cast the spells myself I won’t react like that, so I’ve been practicing.”

“But you’re getting around efficiently on your crutches in the meantime?” 

“Pretty well, yeah.” He’s proud of that, actually; he’s been working on being more mobile for months with every bit as much effort as he ever put into a magical quest. It’s nice to have a payoff for work that doesn’t come with a sting in the tail. Also, “ _ it’s done great things for your arms,” _ Eliot has said more than once, but Quentin is obviously not telling Dr. Ravenwood that. “I wouldn’t want to face too long a staircase with them, but otherwise I think I’m pretty well settled.” 

“That’s what your file says. This is usually the time we transition our patients to outpatient treatment,” Dr. Ravenwood says, and Quentin - doesn’t know what to think, or feel. Logically he knows that it’s the best thing, and he has been reflecting on reasons he’s not exactly thrilled to be inpatient here anymore, but also… 

The routine has been good for him. He’s nervous about changing it. And it isn’t just that. He’s - the thing is, it’s not even that he exactly wants to jump right back into the next crisis. He doesn’t, which is actually a surprise. But it sort of feels like he’s had enough quests to last a while, and especially now that he and Eliot are finding their way, Quentin would really just like the time to keep doing that.

“I’m from New York,” he says, because that is the biggest possible issue. “And I’m not - I know I was sent here from Brakebills, but I have no intention of continuing my studies there.” Which means he probably won’t have access to the Brakebills portal. 

“I see,” Dr. Ravenwood says. “Well, there are various options for staying local, I’ll give you our information on the topic. You could also choose to transfer - Dr. Lipson sent you here because she felt you would do better with more constant care at first, but I can get you in with a rehab in New York that deals in mixed clients.” 

By mixed, Quentin knows she means magical and mundane. He considers that - going back to New York, continuing his treatment with new people but at the same time giving him and Eliot a chance to start settling into a new life. Could it balance out in the end? He doesn’t know, and that’s the problem. “Would I also be able to get a referral from Dr. Barlow?” he asks, carefully, because that is if anything more pressing an issue than his rehab is. 

“Actually, Miranda does a lot of long-distance sessions through mirror calls. You’d have to arrange it with her, of course, but it’s very likely you wouldn’t need a referral.” 

That’s a relief. It occurs to Quentin that magic really can help when people use it mixed in with more practical things. It’s something he’d sort of learned in the other life, in Fillory, how certain aspects of living without modern conveniences could be mitigated by spells to create, for example, a coldbox as effective as a modern refrigerator. But he’d never really thought about it for life in the normal world until he came here. 

But here, in physical therapy he’s taught exercises to strengthen his good leg and keep the muscles in his stump from atrophying, but David’s also begun teaching him little incantations that do the same. And there’s a potion that eases some of the nastier side effects of his anti-depressants. It’s weird, after magic being either a thing of pure study and application like at Brakebills or part of even more unreal shit like, well, every disaster of the last four years. 

It seems so obvious in hindsight.  _ “There aren’t enough noble quests to go around,” _ Eliot told him once, long ago.  _ “We fix what we can,” _ that magician/doctor had told him when he asked about his dad’s cancer. It should have been so damn  _ obvious  _ \- 

But that’s not his main problem right now, is it? So he clears his throat and straightens in his chair. “I’ll talk to Dr. Barlow at my next session with her, then. I do have a little time to figure out what I’m doing, right?” 

“Absolutely,” Dr. Ravenwood tells him, and then she digs through one of her desk drawers to hand him the documentation she promised about his options. Quentin folds them up small enough to fit in his bag, then settles his arms on his crutches and makes his way back to his room. It’s easy now, he’s not even winded when he gets back, and he takes actual satisfaction in that. 

“Hey, how’d it go?” Eliot asks when he comes in, putting away his phone. 

“Uh… so apparently I’ve hit the stage where they can shift me to outpatient?” Quentin says, settling on the side of the bed. After a moment, Eliot gets up from the chair and sits down next to him. Quentin reaches for his hand without thinking twice. “I should have expected it, probably? But I didn’t, somehow. I think I’m scared,” he says, and it’s hard to say it because it feels stupid. This is progress, he should be happy. 

“Can you tell me why?” Eliot asks, and the thing is that he probably already has a good idea, but assuming they know the other feels a certain way has historically caused them problems. 

“You know routines help with my depression,” Quentin says. “I got a little too used to this one, maybe?” 

“Well, that just means we’ll have to start new ones. Which…” Eliot pauses, then says, “It would probably be better if we looked into the referrals and went back to New York, honestly.” 

“I don’t see why -” Quentin begins, then stops. “No, I do. Because unless we plan to stay out here long-term, I’ll just end up having the same problem again.” 

“Pretty much, yeah. Also…” 

“Is there something you haven’t been telling me, Eliot?” 

Eliot shakes his head. “Not really, no. Something’s gone weird as fuck in Fillory, I’ve known that since the last time I talked to Margo, and I got a text from Alice of all people. These surges are really starting to cause some worry, and I…” Eliot shifts a little so he’s looking at Quentin head on. “I am not saying we dive back in headfirst. I certainly wouldn’t want to even if I thought we could.” 

“I can’t dive in at all,” Quentin points out, the bitterness flaring again. 

“Yes you fucking can, if you had to you’d find a way,” Eliot says firmly. “You don’t have to, that’s the point, you’ve done enough and you can take a damn break. But it’s making me nervous, Q, and I… It’s kind of counter-productive, maybe, but trouble always manages to find us and I can’t help thinking we might be better off if we were closer to backup just in case it finds us again.” 

Quentin sighs. “I need to think about it. I don’t know if I’m ready to go back, El. I know that might sound silly, given that I came out here thinking maybe I wouldn’t be allowed to come back. But I just - shit went really, really wrong, you know?” 

“I know, and it’s not silly, Q,” Eliot says. “We’re not going back to the penthouse, at least. I’m going to… start looking, just in case. So we’re prepared.” 

It’s interesting, how neither of them have questioned that, yes, they’ll be moving in together. Quentin supposes most people would say they should - but they aren’t most people. They never have been, and really it feels like the only thing not in question. Wherever they end up settling, it should be together. 

“Sounds like a plan,” he says, because it is the sensible thing after all. The question still remains, though - is he ready to go back to New York? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot - wants to go back to New York. It’s not particularly about the city itself, though New York City had figured in his dreams for as long as he can remember. He likes California, what he’s seen of it - which is actually more than he’s seen here in San Diego because the summer after first year he and Margo came out to Los Angeles and then spent a few weeks just driving up and down the California coastline. 

They even went to Disneyland, mostly just because Eliot hadn’t ever done it and Margo said everyone should get to go to one of the Disney parks once, even if they were corny as shit. It had actually been fun, even as they pretended to be so above it all. 

The point here is, Eliot has nothing against California, and he doesn’t miss New York so much that if Quentin had a strong preference for staying out here, he’d have a problem with it. It’s just that… Eliot doesn’t think that’s the case. He’s pretty sure Quentin’s just doing an avoidance thing, though he hasn’t said so. It’s not for him to point out, not yet anyway. And he gets it, so he’s hoping it eases on its own. But also, what he told Quentin is true. For reasons of sheer practicality, Eliot feels like they should go back to New York.

They may not all  _ really  _ be friends, too much wariness and old conflict for that. But they are true allies when push comes to shove; even with the handful of betrayals over the years, they keep coming back together and they keep working together. Eliot’s seen hedge covens in his pre-Brakebills years that managed to survive for years on less than that. 

(Eliot was never actually a hedge, never pledged to a coven or whatever term they use for joining up, but a young telekinetic who absolutely needs to get control can only learn so much from fictional portrayals before he comes across some flavor of the real thing. There’s a reason he was so disdainful of hedges, later.)

And the thing is, he can feel the difference in the magic. He doesn’t know what it was like to live with limited magic, only how it was to live with magic at normal levels and with no magic at all. To have energy at his fingertips with a thought, or completely gone. But now, it’s back, only… It shifts, it rises and falls like irregular tides, and that is unnerving. 

Quentin has been talking about sensing the spells at the clinic, about getting headaches when magic surges. Eliot feels his telekinesis _burn _against his hands when surges hit, and it’s terrifying. It’s getting worse, too. 

Eliot gives it three days, and then he shows up at Quentin’s room late one morning to find him freshly showered after a physical therapy session. He’s sitting on his bed with his whole leg folded under him and various pieces of black… They’re not wires, too thick to be wires, they look like a framework of some kind, but because they’re in pieces, Eliot isn’t sure what they’re a framework of. Until he sees there’s one piece shaped like a foot. They’re… plastic, he thinks, that fancy 3-D printer kind of stuff the clinic uses to make prosthetics.

“Quentin, why do you have a smashed prosthetic leg on your bed?” 

Quentin looks up and grins so that Eliot finds himself smiling back before he thinks about it. “I had an idea,” Quentin explains. “Those books talk about magic-twisting, being able to manipulate spells, right? So I had a hunch, tested it last night on a blank page of that enchanted journal Alice gave me. I ripped out a page, then mended it - and I could feel the spells, while I was casting on the journal I could feel that it wasn’t just the, the physical paper and binding and all that which I could sense, it was the magic on it. I just sort of  _ knew  _ that if I wanted to, while I was in there, so to speak, I could have done something to the spells. Weakened or strengthened them.”

Eliot perches on the side of the bed, leaning in for a quick, soft kiss hello. “And so you went from that straight to this?” 

“No, not quite,” Quentin says. “This morning at therapy, I told David. He’s got this light globe, but it’s been dimming, right? So we broke it, and then I mended it - and I was able to mend the light spell too, El, I made it bright again.” 

“Holy shit,” Eliot says. That’s… one hell of a trick, actually. “All right, that’s useful, but I don’t see why you’re mending this.” 

Quentin shrugs, pushing his bangs out of his eyes. “OK, so they’ve been trying to show me the spells they put on the prosthetics, because we think the problem is I can’t wear stuff other people have spelled, right?” 

“Yeah. But you’re stuck on that proximity one, the one that creates a degree of actual sensation in the prosthetic, because there’s a psychic component and being a physical kid, most psychic spells go wrong for you just like the rest of us.”

“Exactly. But this leg’s an older one, the spells were starting to wear off. The theory is, if I can mend the leg, while I’m in there, strengthen the spells, and hopefully, the magic will feel enough like mine after that to stop my ‘allergy’.” 

“Huh.” Eliot considers this. Actually, it makes a good deal of sense, and it just might work. Last time they were talking about just forgoing the proximity spell, but if this works, then there’s no need for that. “This is quite a design, you picked it?” 

“I did, yeah. I was talking to Aubrey, remember? She told me a while back, she can’t control what people think when they see she’s missing a leg, but she can control everything else. Reminded me of you a little. Not in style - tattooed punk is not your thing -” 

“No, but if I wanted it to be I could pull it off -” 

“Oh, I’m sure, dear.” 

“That sounds mocking, Coldwater.” 

“Good, Waugh, it was meant to. Anyway, not the point. The point is, you do the same thing, basically, with your… everything.” 

Eliot smirks. “Everything, Q?” 

Quentin narrows his eyes. “Eliot, the day we met, you were literally  _ posing  _ on the Brakebills sign. That’s what I mean, you do the whole clothes, attitude, performance deal so people see what you want them to. I can’t do that, I wouldn’t want to do that, my patience is way too limited for it and I can’t act for shit anyway. But, so, people are gonna stare anyway, because the prosthetics that try to look like the real thing mostly just look creepy. I know they’re gonna stare, I hate knowing it, but I think if I can tell myself they’re staring at something weird but kinda cool, instead of weird and creepy, it’ll be easier.” 

Quentin sounds relaxed, almost cheerful, talking about this, but part of Eliot aches. Because this is  _ Q, _ who tucks himself into layers and hides behind his hair when he’s uncomfortable. The thought of him unable to escape prying eyes, because people are assholes, it makes Eliot want to break things. But he’s proud of Quentin too, for figuring out a way to cope. Normally, Eliot wouldn’t suggest his own coping mechanisms as a model for anyone, even if the idea of being part of Quentin’s inspiration here makes him feel weirdly soft. But this seems all right.

“Sounds like a plan,” he says, because he is honestly not sure how to put his thoughts into better words. 

“Also thinking of dyeing my hair, that way our friends will ask about that and not the leg,” Quentin adds, absently, as he prepares to cast. Eliot…  _ thinks  _ he’s joking about that part. 

“So we are going back to New York then?” he asks, and tries not to let his relief show too much. 

“Mm-hmm,” Quentin says, nodding. “I think you’re right about wanting to be near backup just in case, and also I don’t really want to learn a new city, so it seems like the best idea.” 

Eliot rests his hand on Quentin’s thigh - the bad one. It makes Quentin look oddly astonished, and Eliot makes a note to touch what remains of Quentin’s left leg more often. To remind him that it changes nothing, as far as Eliot’s concerned, it’s not repellent or horrible or anything. “Good. I’ve been worried,” he makes himself say. “I don’t like what’s going on, with magic, your dreams, any of it.” 

“I know, El. I don’t like it either, which is one reason I think you’re right. But, if we’re going home, I’ve gotta see if this will work.” 

Eliot nods and takes his hand away. He hasn’t actually seen Quentin mend anything since their life on the Mosaic. Back then, Quentin’s mending skills had been put into use often, whether it was when they were fixing up the cabin, when Teddy was little and breaking tiles when he tried to ‘help’ his dads, the glasses Eliot had been forced to wear when he got older, countless other things in between. Eliot had vaguely suspected Q’s discipline might be mending related after a few years, that or something to do with the kinds of spells used in card magic - so, object manifestation or probability, odds on the former. 

He can see it now, though. The same ease of casting he has when he uses his telekinesis, that Margo has when she conjures ice. Quentin’s fingers move and the pieces of leg float into the air, spinning as they fit back into place. What Eliot is not expecting is for those pieces to flare gold as they connect, and when he looks up, looks at Quentin’s eyes - 

His eyes have turned from brown to gold. 

Eliot clenches his jaw to keep himself silent, and keeps watching. A moment later, and the leg is whole once more, floating down to settle gently on the bed. Quentin blinks, and his eyes are familiar soft brown again. “Your eyes changed color,” Eliot says, and Quentin nods. 

“Yeah, they did that before too. Dr. Trieste was observing, she thinks it’s just a weird side effect.” 

_ It had better be, _ Eliot thinks, and then tries to shove the thought aside. He and Quentin both regard the leg for a long moment, and Eliot is remembering Quentin’s reactions, everything from mild discomfort to one horrible incident where he’d been screaming as soon as he put the leg on.

“Only one way to know if it works,” Quentin says, rolling up his pant leg and sliding on the sleeve he’s supposed to wear over his stump so it doesn’t chafe. It isn’t spelled, so Quentin has no trouble with it. He starts to reach for the prosthetic but Eliot puts a hand on his wrist. 

“Let me help?” He’d learned how to fasten and unfasten the leg too, though he’s never actually done it for Quentin before. It had been more a precaution. But he wants to, he wants Quentin to be all right with letting him help like this. 

Quentin pauses a moment, then nods. So Eliot gets up and moves to the other side of the bed, kneeling while Quentin twists so his leg and a half hang off the bed. Eliot doesn’t look up at him, focusing on making sure the prosthetic fits snugly so it won’t hurt Q, but when he looks up - 

This is not exactly a new position, even if the other way round is even more familiar, but for something like this… Quentin trusts him, and that’s more intimate than just about anything. “Do we need to call someone if you try to walk?” 

“I’m not going to walk, just help me stand up?” Quentin says, looking thoughtful. “It doesn’t hurt, El. Help me up?” 

Eliot holds out his hands and Quentin takes them, so Eliot can draw him up off the bed. Quentin sways a little, breathing too hard and his eyes overbright. “El, I - it doesn’t hurt. And it can sort of feel, it’s weird, I don’t know how to describe it, but I think - I think it worked.” 

Eliot laughs and pulls Quentin in close, Quentin’s face hidden against his collarbone while Eliot buries his own face in Quentin’s hair. They’re both laughing, and then they’re both crying, and this might not be the end of it, but it’s a  _ start. _

And they’re going home soon.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The success of the mending experiment means that Quentin falls asleep that night in a good mood. Which, of course, means it’s completely on brand for his brain to decide he needs to pay up with more fucking nightmares.

_ The burn is even worse when it’s everywhere. When the sparks eat all that he is, when the last thing he sees is the horror on Alice’s face. When he doesn’t understand until an elevator opens onto a cold grey corridor. _

_ He never sees Eliot again, not with living eyes. He stands at a bonfire and listens to his onetime roommate, Penny who was only an enemy in the most childish schoolboy sense, who was an ally if nothing else and sometimes something like a friend. Penny who tells him he did the right thing and his friends are better for his death.  _

_ There’s a doorway - there’s a door - but his secrets, isn’t he supposed to tell his secrets -  _

_ He steps through the door and it  _ ** _pulls _ ** _ \- one way, then another, and then everything is golden flame again but it doesn’t hurt this time because he  _ ** _is _ ** _ the flame, it’s his blood and bone and skin and breath -  _

_ \- help, please, can’t anyone hear - _

Quentin wakes up gasping to find his room full of silver light. Sitting in the chair in the corner is Julia, outlined in a silver glow and her eyes gleaming with it. “Am I still dreaming?” Quentin asks, voice raspy. It feels like a dream. 

“No,” Julia says, and her voice doesn’t have quite the same… difference to it that it did when she was a goddess. But somehow, deep down, Quentin knows that this is not the Julia he grew up with, not human Julia. Maybe not goddess Julia either, but something new. “I told you’d I’d come to see you, Q.” 

“You didn’t say you’d drop in glowing in the middle of the night, though.” 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know that part myself.”

Quentin scrubs at his eyes. “Right, OK, I’m turning the light on,” he decides, reaching for his crutches. 

“I can get -” 

“No,” Quentin says, quiet but firm, and he pushes off the blanket, turning himself on his arms so he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, and fits his crutch cuffs on his arms so that he can go over to the light switch and turn the light on. He blinks, squinting, then looks back at Julia. Her eyes are still silver, glittering if not glowing, and the silver-edged light fades from around her form only slowly. 

“You’re pretty good on those,” she says, and in spite of the eyes and the fading glow she sounds like herself. Quentin takes a deep breath. 

“It’s been five months. And I didn’t exactly have much choice, did I?” He’s waking up, which means the bitterness is coming back. He remembers telling her once, what feels like a lifetime ago, that he didn’t want to die mad at her. He thinks about how he didn’t, and he hasn’t, but he feels a little like he did die - not mad at her like he’d feared back then, but  _ lost _ , and no one noticed. Not even Julia.

But he didn’t die at all. It’s probably some kind of lingering mental fuckery from that dream, and yet…

“I really didn’t think I was sending you away for good. I didn’t think you’d  _ think that, _ Q,” Julia says, and Quentin sits back down on the edge of the bed, looks at his oldest friend, and believes her. He believes her, but he’s not sure how much it changes, really. 

“What was I supposed to think, Julia?” 

“That I wanted you to get the help you needed!” 

“I needed help before all this! I needed someone to see that I was fucking drowning!” 

Julia stiffens. “That’s not fair. I knew you - damn it, Q. I knew you weren’t OK but what was I supposed to do? Make you give up on Eliot? Would you ever have done that?” 

“No, never,” Quentin says, and it’s true. “But it might have helped if you’d asked me why. Maybe. I can’t be sure I wouldn’t have brushed you off,” he admits, because that is also true and he wants to be fair. “The thing is, Julia, it feels like… like I was screaming right there in front of you, and you didn’t even glance at me.” 

“I was - I didn’t think I could stop you. I thought there’d be time, after, when you weren’t driving yourself at a goal,” Julia explains. “I get it, I fucked up, but, Q, you were always safe when you had a goal in mind. It was after you managed the goal that…” Her eyes widen. “But you’d managed it, hadn’t you? I thought you were still going, because you had the Monster, but Eliot was back and you didn’t care anymore, did you?” 

Quentin blinks. “I… no, not exactly. I did want to be the one to banish the Monster, for - it stole Eliot, it tortured me, and it was the only thing I could do after watching it kill all those people, helping it so that I could save El, so it wouldn’t kill any of our group. I did still have a goal, it’s just… I don’t spiral like that anymore, Jules. I, I lock in, and keep going till someone makes me stop or I fucking - pass out.” 

Teddy had been spending the entire summer with Arielle and her new husband, that was when they found out that if Quentin was locked in and uninterrupted, he would literally keep going till he dropped as if he were a robot. So many of the memories are soft-edged hazy things, like memories of childhood or at the edge of sleep, but the muscle memory is there, more than it isn’t, and so are the patterns of things. Like habits, like how he spirals. 

“I didn’t know that,” Julia says. 

“I know you didn’t,” Quentin says. “I don’t know, Julia. I know you didn’t mean it, but… After all this, why did you just send me away alone?”

And Julia actually laughs, looking sad. “I know how much you hate people seeing you struggle. I thought you’d prefer to heal where we couldn’t see it, so that you could come back to us healthy. I thought I was helping you, rushing you off before losing your leg made you spiral even more.” 

“Again, you should have asked me. You… kind of do that sometimes, Jules. Just assume that you know what I need. And, yeah, you know me better than almost anyone, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, we’re pretty different people. The things you think should work won’t always for me, not because they’re bad ideas but because we’re just wired differently.”

“You’re talking about before all this, when I wanted you to get over Fillory. Q, I still think -” 

“Julia, giving it up wouldn’t have made facing the real world any easier. You weren’t all the way wrong; something was still missing, then, and I don’t mean magic. I did need a change, no idea what it would’ve been without magic. But giving up my… mental safe space wasn’t what I needed. I get that it was what worked for you, but that’s exactly what I mean.”

“You sound like you understand a lot more than you used to,” Julia says, and Quentin almost laughs. 

“You know I think I do? The funny thing is - you were right, in a way. Coming out here did turn out to be for the best, because it… I have structure here, and routine, and my head can’t get too far in telling me I should be further along than I am because, well, people whose job it is to measure this stuff tell me I’m doing well.” 

“And you’ve had Eliot here for a good bit of the time.” 

Quentin smiles, and he must look a little ridiculous from the way Julia smiles back. “I have, yeah. I was already improving in some ways, but… Yeah. Having Eliot here has really been important even before we… sorted ourselves out. Which we have, and no, there are no juicy details because, hello, still a patient.” 

“Well, damn, there goes half my fun. He told me off, you know. Said I should have known that leaving you alone was the last thing you needed. He was right, I did know, but all I could think was if we didn’t send you things would get worse. And I’d talk to Margo, she was afraid of what both you and Eliot might do to yourselves trying to help each other, and given that, frankly, that’s how we got in this mess -” 

“That at least wasn’t your call or hers.” 

“Maybe not, but we were worried about you, Q. I still don’t know Margo that well, but… I know I was sincere, I figure there’s no reason to think she wasn’t.”

Quentin is silent for a long moment, thinking of how he hadn’t wanted to die angry at Julia. At how he might have died in the Mirror Realm having barely said good-bye to her. Of four years of tangles and messes, and God, he may not want to be the boy he was but when it comes to him and Julia part of him does long for what they were. “I know you were worried. But, next time - ask me what I need, instead of assuming.”

“I can do that,” Julia says before getting up, slowly, and sitting next to him. After a moment, she offers her hand. After another moment, Quentin takes it - and gasps at the rush of energy singing through his veins from where their hands clasp. It feels like it’s waking him up somehow, and when he looks at Julia she’s as surprised as he is. 

“What - you got your magic back and then some, didn’t you?” he asks, because it’s better than asking  _ What are you now? _ which was his first thought. Granted, he knew that, what with the showing up glowing, but holy fuck. 

Julia grins, and Quentin is suddenly fourteen and being talked into assisting the freshman girls’ soccer team with their latest prank because he can’t say no to Julia. “Very much ‘and then some.’ I petitioned Hecate, the goddess of magic. It turns out the Binder was bullshitting me. What I did turned me into a demigoddess, I just couldn’t unlock my powers. Hecate restored me.” 

“In exchange for what, Julia?” Quentin asks, because gods don’t just… do shit like that.

“For a year and a day, I belong to her service,” Julia says. “Which isn’t ideal, but it’s not that long and the things I’ll be able to learn, Q. Magic beyond what hedges or Brakebills can even  _ think  _ of. Being a devotee for a little while is nothing to that.” 

“If you say so,” Quentin says. “You’re happy with it, Julia? Really?” 

“Yeah, I promise. And you? You’re happy?” 

Quentin smiles. “I’m really happy. The leg is… it’s life, I’m learning to accept it. But Eliot and I… Jules, I love him so much, you have no idea, and I… I’m really, honestly, happy.” Somehow, saying it to Julia, who he's known since they were four, makes it real in a way it's never been. Things aren't perfect, will never be easy, but he's _happy_.

“Good.” She opens her arms, a little unsure, and Quentin hates that, suddenly. He’s still not sure he’s entirely forgiven her but she’s going away for a year and she’s still his oldest friend. So he hugs her tightly, kissing her temple in a move more like Eliot might with Margo, but in the moment it feels right. 

Julia tenses, briefly, but it’s clear almost right away it’s not from Quentin’s unusual gesture. “Q. You take care, OK? And those dreams… they matter. For you, but not exactly. Pay attention to them, all right?” 

Before Quentin can answer, she evaporates and he’s left trying to embrace air. 

What the fuck?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quentin's prosthetic looks like this: https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_3840/25d71420696469.5631224e0cd77.JPG
> 
> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter!


	6. Drops of Jupiter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Certain topics our boys have been avoiding finally come up, and Quentin's discharge has them preparing to go home. 
> 
> They aren't expecting the latest clue about Quentin's dreams, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some discussion of the Monster's actions and Eliot's perspective on those, as well as a reference to the 4.06 choking incident. Also, the deaths of Logan and Mike come up.
> 
> Also, the very end of the chapter has some unsettling imagery. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii for reading over my drafts and also to my writers' server (and other writer friends) who have been soundboards about this verse. Because, yes, it's a verse now! This particular story is almost complete, but I expect at least one more multi-chapter fic before I'm done with this setting.

“What the fuck?” Eliot says the next morning when Quentin tells him, both of them sitting on his bed. 

“Yeah, that was what I thought,” Quentin replies, shaking his head. “I mean, Jules going off to be a demigoddess, that’s, um. I mean, it’s like her - she was talking about being able to learn magic beyond anything hedges or classical magicians have thought of. That is  _ right  _ up her alley. I’m a little worried about her having petitioned a goddess given our luck but, well… I just got done telling her she shouldn’t decide things for me, she needs to trust that I know what to do, so I should do the same for her.” 

Eliot frowns. “I’m not talking about that. Julia’s business is her business as far as I’m concerned. I’m talking about what she said about your dreams, Q.” 

Quentin sighs. “I know. But I can’t figure it out. At least… OK, so I got as far as, I could easily have died. In the dream last night, that’s what happened. Remember Dr. Trieste said time magic was probably part of that blast, I’m sure psychic stuff was too… maybe I’m seeing a future that might have been?” 

“Maybe, but it didn’t happen so why would it be important?” 

“Well, that’s the question.”

Eliot’s frown deepens. “I don’t like that question.” 

Quentin doesn’t particularly like it either, if he’s being honest, and he tells Eliot as much. “I have to think Julia… sensed something. I don’t know if she left of her own accord or if maybe Hecate yanked her away because she was due to start her year of service, but I don’t think she’d be that cryptic unless that was all she knew. Or unless becoming a demigoddess gave her a partial personality transplant, but she seemed mostly normal otherwise so I don’t think that’s it.” 

There’s another issue, one that actually started as soon as he’d cast the spell on his new prosthetic. Namely, his magic sense seems to have intensified. He hadn’t noticed immediately, too caught up in the moment, but… 

He’d felt magic before when he was in touching distance of any fellow magician, a prickle on the back of his neck like the magic in them was palpable, but nothing more specific. Last night, Julia’s magic had been a bright fizzing under his skin when he took her hand, and when he hugged her. Now, Quentin lets his hand brush Eliot’s - not an unusual thing - and it feels like sparks in his blood, warm and sharp somehow all at once. And there’s a wash of flavor on his tongue, cinnamon/nutmeg/ginger, that fades as the sparks do.

He hadn’t done much magic until recently. Summoning things, yes, but that didn’t require a tut so much as a card trick hand gesture (at least for him), and the blow-dry spell he uses after he showers, but nothing else. Nothing focused, like he’d done in the past couple weeks. He wonders if his first deliberate ‘magic-twisting’ is the trigger. It probably doesn’t matter, but he’ll check the books, and then tell Eliot. 

He should probably tell Eliot first - Eliot would think so - but if it is normal, better to be able to say that. 

“So all she knows is that your dreams mean something,” Eliot says, drawing Quentin from his thoughts. “And you know that your dreams feel like…” He pauses, swallows. “Like what might have happened if you didn’t survive the blast. So what’s with the campfire?” 

“That I don’t know,” Quentin says honestly, and he doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. But he has this feeling that he’s going to find out at some point. “The thing I keep thinking of is, we were messing with time a couple days earlier. Alice and me, specifically. Now, I trust that past Alice wiped her own memory, but… Alice said the ambient didn’t refresh in time to wipe past me, and I don’t have a gap in my memory that would suggest a wipe anyway. I didn’t think to ask Alice before - and she hasn’t replied to my journal note yet - if she has one.” 

“But you said she didn’t have time to wipe you,” Eliot says, “so you wouldn’t have a gap.” 

“No,” Quentin agrees. “But I also don’t remember a weird couple hours with Alice and me both out of the South uniform either, and you’d think that I would, because the one thing we didn’t do was change our clothes. I know Alice lied to past me, but though she didn’t say as much, the outfits should have busted us as something weird going on.” 

Eliot leans back on his hands as Quentin draws what’s left of his left leg under himself so he can turn and face him better. “OK,” Eliot says. “What do you think happened then?” 

“I don’t know. Mayakovsky knew I time-traveled, Alice knew I time-traveled. I would not put it past Alice to make sure neither of us remembered, but again, no memory gap. I don’t think Mayakovsky cares enough to bother wiping either of our memories. But - OK, look. Using the timeshare spell was my idea, Alice was against it at first, and one of the reasons was… something about the bridge between past and present self being delicate, I don’t know. Jane sent us on forty time loops, then I jumped back mentally to the very middle of the last one.” 

“Are you sure?” Eliot asks. 

“Sure of what?” 

“That it was the last one. I mean, you would have been at South every time -” 

“Assuming the Beast never killed me before that -” 

“Let’s not talk about you dying, OK?” Eliot says, eyes narrowing. “Anyway. Brakebills South is a constant for any time loop that got that far,” he continues. “But you have no memory of the time that past you spent in the present, and while we don’t know till she gets back to you, there’s a good chance Alice’s memory has no gaps in it, or she wouldn’t have objected to your plan, she’d have had a lightbulb moment and realized that was why the weird gap.” 

“So you think I landed in some other loop?” Quentin asks, skeptical. 

“I don’t know, but it’s a possibility, isn’t it? I never actually asked outright, since Margo got the Key from Jane anyway so I assumed the answer was just yes,” Eliot begins, and there’s a wariness in his eyes that makes Quentin nervous. It’s justified when he says, “Did you ever find the Key?” 

Quentin swallows hard, thinking of the limp weight of Eliot’s body in his arms. “Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse. “You - you know you died. Um, I buried you. And, well, that was when - the golden tile, it showed up and… I set it on the Mosaic, and I got the Key. Then Jane the little girl showed up and I gave it to her just like in the book, and afterwards, I… I just went in and after I wrote that letter for Margo and one for Teddy to make sure he took care of the message, I just curled up on the bed. Next thing I knew we were sitting on the throne room dais steps.”

Eliot is staring at him. “Quentin, did you… die the same day I did?” 

Quentin shrugs. “I don’t know exactly. I assume so, but maybe that’s just the last thing I remember because that’s when I wrote the letter that triggered us remembering.” Truthfully, he knows deep in his bones that he didn’t survive the night alone, but that’s an instinct, it isn’t fact or memory. “Why did you ask about the Key anyway?” 

“Just wondering if it had anything to do with all this. I mean, Jane used that to create the time loops, but she would never have had it without us. I don’t know if it means anything now but we probably shouldn’t rule it out.” 

“Forty time loops, with us looping out on our own in the fortieth to do the thing that let any of them happen at all, and then me bouncing backward on the timeline for a couple hours, possibly with some lingering connection to the Key. And if you’re right, possibly going far enough back to hit a different loop.” Quentin rakes a hand through his hair. “I have a fucking headache.” 

“You and me both,” Eliot says, scowling. “Not to mention we still have to find an apartment in New York. Speaking of, I did find an AirBnb in New York for when they release you. This way, we have a little more time to find a place for us, but we don’t have to go back to Kady’s. And don’t look at me like that, Quentin.” 

“Like what?” Quentin had been trying very hard to have no expression on his face, actually. 

Eliot sits back up. “Like you’re about to tell me not to go to the effort. Avoiding that place is for  _ both  _ our sakes,” he says flatly, and Quentin’s argument dies in his throat at the haunted look in Eliot’s eyes. “I was too exhausted to protest, but getting the hell out of there was a relief for me too. I -” 

He stops talking, curling his hands into fists. Quentin’s eyes sting with tears, but he refuses to let them fall, not when Eliot’s the one who needs Quentin to be steady for him now. He blinks them back firmly instead, placing his hands lightly over Eliot’s. After a moment, Eliot lets his hands unclench, lets his fingers tangle with Quentin’s. 

“I still don’t remember everything, Q,” Eliot says. “Honestly, I hope I never do. But I remember enough. I remember that it killed people in that apartment, I remember that it threw you into a wall and wrapped my hands around your throat there. The memories are weird, kind of hazy, and I wasn’t exactly at my best, so it was… bearable, when I was there, but that does not mean I want to go back. It’s not all about you, you know.” 

Quentin winces. “Sorry for assuming.” 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

“El -” 

“I said don’t worry about it,” Eliot repeats, and Quentin feels his hands tense, though he doesn’t pull away. “Not right now, anyway. You have a PT appointment, remember?” 

Quentin very much wants to say  _ fuck my appointment, we need to talk about this, _ but he knows that’s not a good idea. The missing his session part, at least. Missing one time probably won’t set him back too far, but it’s easy to let one time become two, five, ten. Now that he’s going to be outpatient soon, he has to be even more diligent about it. He’s trying not to think how he’ll manage if he’s still in physical therapy the next time he has a down period. 

So for the moment, he lets it go. “You coming?” 

“Sure,” Eliot says, fetching his cane as Quentin fastens his prosthetic, and then they walk down to the gym together. But the almost-argument, not to mention everything they’d been discussing before that, seems to hover in the air, a vibration all its own just like the currents of magic Quentin can sense now. Only this one isn’t welcoming at all. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot doesn’t know how to talk about the Monster, is the problem. 

He thinks about this as he settles in his now-usual chair in the corner, ostensibly playing on his phone while Quentin works with David. The truth is that he hadn’t really thought about his location much, when he’d been at the penthouse. He’d been too tired, too worried about Quentin, too busy trying to gather the pieces of himself together again. What he hasn’t told Quentin yet is this: coming out here to be with him, to repair what they are, it fixed Eliot too. Or, rather, steadied him. He has a feeling neither of them are as fixed as they’d like to be, but it’s a process. 

But part of of being steadier has, inconveniently, meant that Eliot can see some things more clearly. And with hindsight he knows that being at the penthouse was fucking with him, because he half-remembered it. He has the oddest flashes of walking over the couch, or crouching on the kitchen counter, or sitting in the gold chair. None of it is really him, none of it feels quite real, but it’s like his body remembers what it did.

His body remembers other things the Monster did too. The blood and the death is awful, in general - he thinks of the crack of Mike’s neck and Logan’s blood red and bright against school bus yellow - but he can, sort of, rationalize how that wasn’t him. How his hands and body were basically a living gun, and nothing more. He knows how it feels to kill, whether with anger when he didn’t know he could or because in the heat of the moment it was the only option.

(Or, once, cold and calm and premeditated with an actual gun in his hand, because there  _ was  _ another option but it was completely unacceptable.)

The point is, the hazy recollections of the Monster’s murders don’t feel the same, whether because Eliot’s mind can actually differentiate between them or because the Monster itself felt so differently about killing that the remnants of his actions can’t register like that. It’s hard to say. More visceral are the Monster-memories that involve Q, which supports the latter theory about the killing memories because, well… 

In its own twisted way, the Monster had cared about Quentin more than anyone else in the world, before it remembered its Sister. It’s not the same, not at all the same, but it’s closer to Eliot’s love than he likes, enough that it makes those flashes of memory more solid than the others. 

All told, it makes Eliot no more willing to go back to the place that saw so much of the things that wake both him and Quentin in the night - too many of their text conversations happen in the middle of the night - than Quentin is. But he hadn’t wanted to say that. He had, admittedly, wanted to make it about Quentin until Q balked at it, because… It’s easier to take care of someone else than to admit to needing help, or to a weakness. It’s easier to take care of Q, in particular, because he - he’s not a child, he doesn’t  _ need  _ Eliot to take care of him, but he’s always  _ let him _ , let Eliot nudge or tow him along, in ways even his Bambi would get impatient with instead of accepting. 

It’s the kind of thing Eliot hadn’t really known he wanted until a cute nerd with soft floppy hair and big brown eyes stumbled into his life, and maybe he’s been hiding behind it lately. There is a certain truth to the idea that Quentin has needed him more than usual, under the current circumstances, and that maybe part of Eliot prefers that because it means he’s not the one who has to be vulnerable. 

He’s… not entirely sure he likes that thought. And he also - he likes being here. He likes looking up from his phone at the same time as Quentin slants a look his way, and the quick smiles they share. But still… 

“Can we go somewhere not here?” Eliot asks when Quentin’s session is over.

“Well, as part of my transition to outpatient, I have been told I should try day outings. Let me shower first?” Quentin asks, and that’s reasonable so Eliot settles in his usual chair to wait for Quentin. Unfortunately, his usual chair has a good view of the bed, where a certain magicked journal sits open. And he really shouldn’t look at it, because boundaries matter and boundaries especially matter with regards to your boyfriend’s attempt to be friends with his ex-girlfriend, but… 

** _I’m glad things are going well! And I’m happy to help later but right now I’m dealing with a mess. Not sure what’s happening yet but I think we’re going to have to talk soon. _ **

Eliot thinks of Quentin’s dreams, and his stomach turns to knots.

“Eliot?” Quentin approaches him on his crutches, skin still flushed from the heat of his shower even though he’s dry all over. Nifty little spell, Eliot taught him the original actually but Quentin’s redesign is all his own. “Are you reading my mail?” 

“Not - I just looked over,” Eliot says. “But take a look at that.” 

Quentin frowns at him, eyes narrowed, but he goes over to the bed, leaning a little heavily on his crutches as he reads the short message, more than once. “Well, fuck,” he finally says, looking up at Eliot. “You think it’s connected?” 

“I think it could be.” But they have to be sensible about this. The last thing either of them can do right now is fling themselves headfirst into this new crisis. “But we can’t do shit till we know more, so right now table it?” 

“I’m awful at tabling shit. But, also…” Quentin glances at his crutches, at Eliot’s cane leaning against his chair, at the clinic room that’s still his for now. “We still have shit, so all right. Tabled till we actually know enough to help?”

“It’s a deal. Are you going to take the crutches or the leg?” 

Quentin shrugs. “Leg with a cane, I think,” he says, sitting down and reaching under the bed, coming up with a standard-issue hospital cane. “David said it’s the best way to practice if I’m outside, something about extra support since my leftover leg muscles aren’t used to supporting me anymore.” 

Eliot, glancing at his own cane, shakes his head. “We are a fucking mess, Coldwater.” 

“Yeah, but that’s nothing new, Waugh, it’s just more obvious now.” 

And isn’t that the fucking truth. So they leave the clinic and Quentin actually stops on the street corner, head tipped up to the sky and a thoughtful twist to his mouth. “You know, this is the first I’ve been outside medical facility grounds since I woke up?” he asks Eliot, looking sidelong at him through a just-long-enough fringe of hair. 

“I didn’t know but I suspected. Come on, we’re almost insanely close to the beach, you know.” 

“We’re going to the - Eliot, are you serious right now?” 

Technically, they’re not going to the beach. They’re going to a tiny overlook Eliot found one afternoon when, restless in the early days of being here with Quentin, he’d gone for a long walk in defiance of his fucked up leg. There’s nothing there really, it’s just a park bench and a railing, and the beach beyond it. But… 

“The Pacific is a lot bluer than the Atlantic,” Quentin says after a few minutes’ silence on the bench. “I feel like I read why somewhere, but I can’t remember it.” 

“Don’t remember it, just enjoy the view,” Eliot teases, but he can’t hold the laughing tone. He stares out at the water because  _ when I’m braver _ is still true, but this is a different sort of brave and he’s not sure he can talk and look into Quentin’s eyes at the same time. Not when so many of the memories that haunt him most are full of a Quentin fading away under the horror of the things the Monster riding Eliot’s body put him through. 

“I dreamed of what it did to you,” he says finally, just loud enough to be heard over wind and sea. “Before I even really woke up, I would dream of it and half-wake to people in my room that were never you. I was afraid you were dead, Q.” He’d had that nightmare once too, not even in the hospital but after, one of Kady’s hedge contacts had offered a pain potion that turned out more hallucinogen, and Eliot doesn’t remember much but he remembers the screaming void at his center, the burn of his flask liquor and the weight of his dark suit only barely keeping him anchored in the world. “Those are the clearest, those memories. But I - I remember blood on my hands and it didn’t care, so now I feel… I should be horrified, shouldn’t I? I should be as horrified by that as, as by the shit I’ve done, but it just feels unreal, honestly.” 

Quentin reaches for his hand and Eliot lets him, feels like he can breathe more easily when Q’s grip tightens. “I think, um, so, therapy-speak and shit, but I don’t think there’s really a  _ should _ ? I mean, it wasn’t you -” 

“But I still know that the last thing those people saw before they died was my face,” Eliot says, voice measured enough that it comes out cold. “I don’t give a fuck about the gods it killed - from what I saw in its memories and what I was told later, they  _ made  _ the Twins and then killed one and locked up the other. So they got what they deserved in my book. But the other people… And the worst thing is, I’d do it again. I would shoot that thing again, set it all in motion again, because at the end of it, I’m sitting here with you, and you’re not in fucking Blackspire forever. What do I do with that, Q?” 

“I mean. You could argue that by sabotaging the Monster being banished, I’m partly to blame at least for everyone who died after that,” Quentin says, and his voice is as level and cool as Eliot’s. “But I’d do it again too, for us to be here. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say anything that great about either of us, but since we’re matched in it, does it really matter?” 

“I’m  _ sick  _ of having to make choices like this,” Eliot bites out, and he pulls free of Quentin’s grip to bury his face in his hands. “And you’ve got your fucking dreams and Alice’s goddamned note and whatever Margo’s dealing with in Fillory will probably suck us in and I am  _ sick of this! _ I want -” 

Eliot stops, because the truth is he’s never really let himself think about what he actually wants, in a long-term sense. Never dared. He wants Quentin, and he wants Margo back with the strain between them fixed, because his Bambi and his Q are the only real home he’s ever known, but beyond that, beyond being sick of the shitty choices and the almost losing each other… 

What the fuck does he want?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


This is not the conversation Quentin expected to have today, even after the little dust-up this morning. It had been about the penthouse this morning, but then he supposes the problem with Kady’s place is the Monster, so talking about the Monster is cutting out the middleman. Middle subject. What the fuck ever.

This is not the conversation he expected to have, while watching where white-tipped blue sea meets bluer sky. The sky had been this blue in Greece, he remembers, when Brian slipped away as Quentin crashed back into himself, when the Monster laid Eliot’s head on Quentin’s shoulder and Quentin forgot the lessons Brian learned and dared to ask for something. 

If he hadn’t asked, would the Monster have simply dragged him around until he dropped dead of exhaustion? Quentin doesn’t know, and he supposes it doesn’t matter anymore. No; he knows it doesn’t matter, because  _ what matters _ is Eliot sitting next to him with his head in his hands, shoulders heaving like he’s crying but Quentin’s pretty sure there aren’t any actual tears. Sometimes things are too much for tears. 

Didn’t Eliot tell him that once, when they were in their fifties and talking was almost easy?

Talking is not easy now, when Quentin tries to put a hand on Eliot’s shoulder and he shies away. But he remembers this too, this is familiar - Quentin is the first to admit that he’s probably let the memories of their other life take on a too-rosy glow at times, but it isn’t that he’s forgotten the hard stuff. Just that he’d needed the better parts, something to hold onto when he didn’t think he had anything else.

So he remembers when Eliot gets like this, when something is too big to brush off with a joke or a bitchy comment. He either shuts down and powers through or he curls in on himself until he gets control back, flinching away from comfort that might break his control completely. And Eliot’s never said, but Quentin suspects the blame for this belongs to a man who lives on a farm in Indiana, and he has never,  _ never  _ wanted to learn how to put truly vicious curses in the mail as much as he does when he considers this.

“So after this we walk away,” Quentin says instead of trying to touch Eliot again, because he remembers that insisting on trying to offer physical comfort usually ends with Eliot storming off. 

“What?” Eliot grits out, voice muffled behind his hands. 

“I said, after this we walk,” Quentin repeats, suddenly dizzy with his own words because - he means them. He fucking means them, him, the guy who once didn’t understand how people could be  _ podiatrists  _ if they knew about magic. 

_ “This isn’t Middle-Earth, Quentin. There aren’t enough noble quests to go around.”  _

Maybe it is Middle-Earth and this is the boat to the Grey Havens, except that’s kind of a death metaphor so he shouldn’t think like that. But it’s - he means - “You’re right, we’re already in whatever’s happening now, but afterwards, we stop. We… retire from magical crises. Why the fuck not?” 

Eliot finally lifts his head, staring at Quentin like he’s a pod person. “Who are you and what have you done with Quentin Coldwater?”

And, if this were any less deadly serious, Quentin would laugh because that is, actually, an extremely valid question. It’s just that… He thinks of the Monster telling him Eliot was dead.  _ “I felt his soul die. I promise he didn’t suffer.” _ Eliot lying on the forest floor, his blood on the leaves and on Margo’s axe. Quentin thinks of his dreams, he thinks of reality, the way the sparks  _ burned _ . He thinks about waking up with one leg, thinks about not waking up at all and a white doorframe in a grey parking lot. 

He doesn’t understand what his dreams mean but he knows what they say. 

And he looks at Eliot here, now, looks at the shadows in his eyes, thinks about the penthouse that holds too many demons for them both. 

“I’m sick of it too,” he finally says, because he doesn’t know how to put his thoughts into words. “El, I -” Carefully, cautiously, he reaches for Eliot’s hands, and he breathes a little easier when Eliot lets him, when he holds on too. 

“You hated the idea that you wouldn’t be useful anymore, Q, come on.” 

“Yeah, because I thought it meant I’d be kicked to the curb.” Which is only partly true, really - Quentin still remembers how the thought of going to work for the Library made him want to die. That still isn’t what he wants, for all that Alice seems to have unexpectedly thrived on it. He’s glad for her but for himself, no. But, but he does want… “We cut it too close, for both of us. And now that we’ve finally found our way back to each other, I don’t want to chance that again. If - if stepping back is what you want too.”

Eliot is still staring at him. “I never wanted this job in the first fucking place, Q. I went to Fillory because I was a wreck and I thought it’d kill me, might as well go out in some vaguely useful and/or impressive fashion.”

Quentin’s mind wants to turn on him hearing that, wants to start a guilt spiral over how he completely missed that at the time because he was caught up in his own shit, some friend he was. But he takes that whisper and shoves it in a box in the corner of his mind. Not fucking now, this is not the time for his bullshit. “Then this is our last go-round. You keep telling me we need to step back to recover, let’s stay stepped back. I’d say we do it now except it’s already too late.” 

“And if it’s already too late next time?” 

“We won’t let it be.” Quentin tugs, gently, and Eliot doesn’t stop him, so he keeps tugging until he can pull Eliot into a hug, and it feels like that day in the armory all over again, Quentin remembers the way Eliot had held onto him, the levity in his words a thin cover for very real fear.  _ I won’t leave you here alone, you said I wasn’t alone and neither are you, _ Quentin had thought then. He’d been absolutely shitty at living up to that unspoken promise, but not anymore. 

Not ever again. That’s decided, that’s been decided, hasn’t it? And if he thinks of a flicker of dream, of the worst of all the ways he could have left and how easily he would have gone… Well. It’s just more reason to never let this happen again, not here.

“I don’t know what to do with the shit it left in my head,” Eliot mutters, the words muffled against Quentin’s shoulder, and Quentin is viciously glad for the first time since he did it that he was the one to banish the Monster.

“We’ll figure it out,” Quentin murmurs in Eliot’s ear. “You came out here for me, I’m here for you, that’s how this works.” _ Remember? _ he almost adds, but doesn’t. 

“I guess it is,” Eliot concedes, and that’s enough to be going on with. That’s a start Quentin can work with.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot packs it away again, because of course he does. Mostly because he can only handle offering that much raw honesty in short bursts. Honesty in  _ general _ , with Quentin, is the sort of thing that happens even when Eliot doesn’t mean it to, but not like that. Like that, it has to come in doses. And because they do know each other, hazy other-life providing a cheat sheet to augment the four years of actual this-life knowing (and maybe instincts of thirty-nine times they can’t remember), Quentin lets him do it. 

It’s a relief to know that he can drop the walls, or not, and both are equally allowed. That’s a little surprising, actually. But Eliot’s patience for self-analysis has never been high, and a few days later, Quentin’s being discharged so there are more practical concerns. They’re staying in Eliot’s hotel room for the night, then heading back to New York City by portal in the morning. 

Packing is easy, given Quentin’s enchanted duffle bag, courtesy of Julia. It’s the white box among Quentin’s things that surprises Eliot, though. “This is hair dye.” 

“I told you, I want to dye my hair before we go back to New York, or maybe just before we see our friends, whichever.” 

Eliot blinks once, twice, then looks down at the box. Auburn, which actually is a color that he thinks will look good on Quentin, if applied properly. He’s not entirely sure it’s going to be applied properly if he leaves Q to it, though… “I thought you were joking,” he says finally. 

“Why would I joke about dyeing my hair? That’s not even funny. Unless I was going for, like, blue again.” 

_ “Again?!” _ That may have come out a little louder than intended, but Eliot thinks it’s justified. He’s trying to imagine his Q, who hides behind layers and long hair, dyeing that hair blue when it virtually guarantees drawing people’s attention.

“I lost a bet with James. Don’t remember what about anymore, but it was that or shave it all off. Jules helped me dye it with Kool-Aid, this was summer before senior year of high school. My dad laughed, my mother almost strangled me, but that was about per usual. And no, there are no pictures, I lived with Jules after high school long enough to destroy her copies.” 

Damn. Well, Eliot can learn to live with these little disappointments. “Well. I’ll be the one helping you with this,” he says airily, wiggling the box in the air. Quentin raises his eyebrows. 

“Oh, will you?” 

Eliot grins. “Well, easier to get to harder to reach spots if you let me help. Also, I have practice. Margo spent spring semester our first year trying a variety of colors. There’s a spell to strip dye out of hair without the same damage that chemical stripping does, too. In case this doesn’t work out as well as you’d like.” 

“Hmm,” says Quentin, but Eliot can already tell he isn’t going to argue. Which is how they spend a significant portion of their last night in San Diego in the bathroom of Eliot’s hotel room. Quentin’s hair has grown out some in the last five months - it’s about as long as it was when Eliot first saw him, a little shorter probably but close. It’s a good look on him, and if Eliot has anything to say about it, the auburn will be too. 

The routine is familiar - Eliot hadn’t been lying when he said Margo spent that semester fiddling with colors. She’d done some of it herself, of course, but she’d also enlisted his help. He, of course, had constantly threatened to turn her hair ridiculous colors, but he didn’t actually do it until summer when almost everyone had gone. 

The Happy Place had recreated one of those lazy summer days for him, Eliot remembers - with a nice added touch that Charlton had interrupted the last time. Quentin in the clothes he’d worn to the Mosaic, his hair that so-familiar length. He’d end up curled on the floor beside the couch, just where Eliot could reach down to play with his hair. 

But it had never been quite real - Margo a little too soft-edged, without the familiar scents of her perfume and shampoo. Quentin too quiet, his skin cool when Eliot’s wandering fingers found the nape of his neck. This is real now, Quentin’s hair wet under his fingers, even the unpleasant smell of the dye, the way Quentin is rambling about one of his books - Eliot has managed to gather that they’re about a girl training for knighthood and that in the book Quentin is on she’s running an anti-bullying crusade in the training school. 

“That sounds nice, dear,” Eliot says dryly as he leaves the dye to sit a while. 

“You’re making fun of me,” Quentin declares, making a face at him in the mirror. 

“Mm. Only a little bit.” 

The nice thing about having magic is that it makes some things easier. A flick of fingers in a quick tut once Quentin’s hair is washed clean of the remaining dye, and soft dry auburn hair is left to fall around his face. It’s kind of funny, though, because Quentin casts that particular spell and he’s too used to casting it on his whole body. 

“Well, I wanted to get a little windblown today,” Eliot jokes, fixing his own curls set into disarray by the too-wide blast of warm dry air.

“Oh, bite me,” Quentin grumbles. 

“I mean, I have no objections to that,” Eliot says lightly, laughing at the glare Quentin sends his way. “You walked right into that one, Q, you have to admit that.” 

Quentin sighs, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, OK, fair enough.” He runs a hand through his hair. “So, judgment on your handiwork here?” 

Eliot grins, carefully turning Quentin around so he can look in the mirror. “What do you think?” he asks, resting his chin on top of Quentin’s head and watching their reflections. It’s interesting to look at them together like this because - Eliot’s hair is shorter again but he hasn’t been styling it as thoroughly as he did before the Monster, so he’s still more tousled than usual. And now Quentin is a redhead, studying the results thoughtfully. 

It looks good, in Eliot’s opinion. The auburn suits Quentin, brings out something warmer in his face, a brighter look to his eyes. After a moment, Quentin smiles too. “I like it. No need for that stripping spell of yours. Speaking of spells, though, I need to talk to you about something.” 

“What?” Eliot asks, not liking the sound of that. Still, they go to sit on the edge of his bed, a mirror of all the times they did the same thing in Quentin’s room at the rehab center. There are more places to sit in Eliot’s room than there had been in Quentin’s, but it’s a habit by now. 

“New development in the magic-sense. And I checked, this is also a thing that happens. The book says it’s a kind of synesthesia, almost, but anyway, I’ve started picking up people’s magics, like sensing each person’s individual power - their discipline, I’m thinking.” 

“I thought you could already do that?”

“Yeah, but before I just knew someone had magic. Now I get this, like I can taste it, different flavors, if I touch someone skin to skin. I’m gonna keep a list, try to see if there’s patterns. I figure there’s gotta be, so like Daniel’s actual discipline is that he can ease pain - or make it worse, apparently. So at my last session, I noticed, we shook hands at the end and I tasted, it was like chamomile and some kind of mint? Aubrey hugged me, her thing’s pyrokinesis, by the way, and it was like chili pepper.” 

Quentin makes a face at that one. “A little too much chili pepper for my tastes, actually, and kind of really on the nose, but I guess some of it would be?” 

Eliot’s made no secret of the fact that Quentin’s new skills make him nervous, but he can’t help enjoying seeing him excited about this new development. Also, it occurs to him that they are no longer in Quentin’s clinic room, they are in his hotel room and Quentin may have just given him yet another opening. 

He trails a finger along Quentin’s arm and Quentin stops mid-word, blinking and suddenly very still. Eliot grins at him. “Skin to skin, hmm?” he asks, tracing a path up Quentin’s shoulder until he can cup the back of his neck, and Eliot’s hand is big enough that he can feel Quentin’s pulse speeding up under his touch. “So… what can you taste now?” 

Quentin’s eyes have gone dark with interest, but he still huffs at that. “Oh, I should have known you’d -” 

Eliot shuts him up by kissing him, which has always been the best way to make Quentin go quiet. “Tell me,” he whispers against Quentin’s lips, nipping the lower one. “Tell me,” he says again, tightening his grip on the back of Quentin’s neck. Quentin whines, goes half-limp under Eliot’s hand, grabbing at Eliot’s shoulders to steady himself. 

“Spices,” Quentin says finally, a familiar breathless note in his voice. “Cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger, and if you make the obvious joke about tasting good I will hex you, because honestly.” 

The moment - doesn’t break, but shifts, Eliot laughing as he kisses Quentin’s throat. “All right, I won’t - this time,” he agrees cheerfully enough. He shifts a little, enough that he can press Quentin down to the bed, stretch out on top of him and kiss him some more. He’s been wanting the chance to do this since that day in the courtyard - before that, but that was when he knew it was something he could have - to pin Quentin with his own body and just kiss him till they’re both breathless. 

And it’s good, until - 

“Ow,” Eliot mutters, his bad ankle banging against Quentin’s plastic foot. He doesn’t think much of it until Quentin suddenly goes tense under him. “Q?” 

“Um, I should… take that off,” Quentin says, but he won’t meet Eliot’s eyes and Eliot rolls off him with the distinct sense that the moment has definitely broken this time. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


For a moment, Quentin just lies there where Eliot put him, staring up at the ceiling. He’d been very carefully not thinking about this during those times at the clinic when he’d put a stop to their kissing, always using the honest objection that he really didn’t want to get carried away somewhere he couldn’t leave, being a patient. But it isn’t just that. 

The scars are - are scars. He’s gotten a look at his back now, and there are a lot of them, thin lines like spiderweb cracks in glass. But he’s used to scars. They litter the insides of his forearms, after all. But his leg… 

“Quentin.” 

Quentin blinks, and finds Eliot’s face hovering over him. He looks worried, and Quentin sighs, pushing himself up to sit again. “So… not wanting to get caught by the nursing staff might not have been my only problem,” he makes himself say. 

“Yeah, I’m getting that impression,” Eliot says, sitting cross-legged on the foot of the mattress and facing Quentin. “Q, it doesn’t mat-” 

“Don’t say it doesn’t matter, Eliot! It matters.”

“No,” Eliot says, immovable. “It doesn’t. Not in the way you’re thinking. Can I take this off?” he asks, fingers hovering just over where Quentin’s prosthetic fits over what’s left of his leg. Quentin remembers the other day, letting Eliot put the leg on him after the spell, and he nods. So Eliot rolls up Quentin’s pant leg and carefully removes the prosthetic and the protective sleeve under it, a wave of his hand sending them drifting over to rest on the little table. But his other hand stays on the remains of Quentin’s leg, his touch light against the skin. 

“Eliot -” 

Eliot’s fingers sweep over the base of Quentin’s stump, tracing the scar tissue as Quentin’s breath catches in his throat. It’s not just Eliot’s touch, though - he looks up, suddenly, and Quentin doesn’t think he’s seen Eliot’s eyes that intense in either of their lives. “Do you know what I think, when I see this, feeling the scars left behind? Or the others? Your shirts ride up, Q, I’ve seen the burn scars on your back too.” 

Quentin’s throat is too tight for him to speak; he shakes his head, staring up at Eliot as he straddles him, hands sliding under his shirt and over the scars on his back. Eliot’s hands are warm, but Quentin still shivers. 

“I’ll tell you what I see. What I feel,” Eliot says, pulling one hand free and curling it around the side of Quentin’s neck, where his pulse must be racing against Eliot’s palm. “I see that you’re still here. That I almost lost you, and the scars, your missing leg, they tell me how close it was. They tell me it didn’t happen, just like your pulse under my hand tells me you’re still with me. I don’t care, because you’re still here. You’re still you, and that is all that matters to me, do you understand?” 

Quentin nods, but Eliot’s not done. “Those dreams of yours - maybe somewhere there’s an Eliot who did lose his Quentin, and he must be losing his fucking mind, Q. Just the - the  _ thought  _ sends me reeling.” His hand moves, gripping tight at the nape of Quentin’s neck until he gasps; Eliot takes advantage of his open mouth to kiss him, hard and deep, and Quentin remembers a hazy flash from a long-ago night - 

_ Eliot knocks his hand away, his own curling round the back of Quentin’s neck hard, his kiss like a brand, his hold like a claim -  _

“Tell me to stop,” Eliot whispers, pressing Quentin back again. “Tell me, and I will, but don’t hide from me. You don’t have to, you never have to; nothing has changed and it never will, Q.” 

“Don’t stop,” Quentin says, and it’s like he suddenly remembers his own hands, and that he can actually use them, fumbling at the buttons on Eliot’s shirt until he can get it open, get to Eliot’s skin. “Don’t ever stop, I’m sorry I -” 

“Don’t be sorry,” Eliot says, ducking his head to suck a mark on Quentin’s neck. Oh, that’s going to be visible later and Quentin doesn’t care, if anything he loves the thought, fumbling still with Eliot’s shirt, with his belt buckle. 

It’s almost frantic, the way they yank at each other’s clothes. For once Quentin getting tangled in his own sleeves isn’t his fault, and he has absolutely no idea where his jeans even landed, though he does catch a glimpse of his sock on the nightstand. It doesn’t matter when they can press together skin to skin, Quentin’s good leg hooked around Eliot’s waist to keep him close as their hips roll together. 

And it’s - this all started with Eliot wanting to know how his magic tastes, and it’s all a dizzy whirl in Quentin’s head now, sweet spices and the taste of Eliot’s kisses, his skin on Quentin’s tongue, sparks all along his skin where they touch both from need and this new sixth sense. It’s so  _ much _ , and Quentin can hardly breathe through it. 

“Want you inside me - use, use that spell, don’t want to wait,” he says, the words breathed in Eliot’s ear before Quentin turns his head, pressing kisses down the length of his jaw instead. 

“Fucking hell, Q,” Eliot mutters, biting Quentin’s shoulder and then sliding a hand down to rest against Quentin’s stomach, tracing a tut there. Quentin squirms in spite of himself - he usually isn’t keen on the prep spell because it feels so damn weird, but he’s too impatient to care, now. 

Eliot laughs and twists a hand; a pillow settles under Quentin’s hips and the next thing he knows Eliot is pushing two fingers inside him, brushing over his prostate and making Quentin moan, head tossed back. “Just making sure,” Eliot says as he fits a third finger inside, sly and pleased with himself, and holy God if he doesn’t fuck Quentin  _ now  _ there will be hell to pay later. Quentin bites his lip and pushes back against those teasing fingers, one hand gripping Eliot’s shoulder and the other twisting in the bedding under him. 

“Come  _ on _ , El, for fuck’s sake -” 

“Always so impatient,” Eliot laughs again, taking his hand away. Quentin swallows back a whine, narrowing his eyes at Eliot, who only grins again and Quentin is going to kill him if he doesn’t - 

Eliot ducks down briefly, pressing a soft kiss to what’s left of Quentin’s knee, and his thoughts scatter completely, the gentle affection in the wake of teasing almost more than he can stand. Then, finally, God, Eliot is pressing inside him, Quentin just managing with his good leg to tilt his hips up to meet him. 

It doesn’t last, can’t last, both of them a little wild with it after weeks of pulling away before kisses got too heated, the rhythm they find is desperate and shaky from the start, Eliot’s hand wrapped around Quentin’s cock as Quentin tightens around Eliot’s inside him, and it’s - 

They come almost at the same moment, moans stifled by kisses just as messy, just as needy, and stay like that for long moments, catching their breath, before Eliot pulls out and rolls to the side. Quentin doesn’t think he can really move yet, but he reaches for Eliot’s hand so that they’re still touching at least a little. And after a few minutes he turns on his side, leaning up on one elbow to look at Eliot. It feels weird to lie on his left side now, but he’s getting better at ignoring it. 

“You know I’m not going anywhere.” 

Eliot, who had closed his eyes, opens one. “That doesn’t change what I said.” Quentin, his eyes drifting to the scar on Eliot’s stomach left by Margo’s axe, thinks of blood on grass and the Monster’s monotone lies, and he has to agree. 

“Fair enough,” he says, and lays back down, letting his own eyes close. He doesn’t really sleep, just drifts until his cell phone alarm suddenly goes off. 

“Ugh, why,” Eliot grumbles, and from the sound of his voice he actually had been asleep. 

“Pill time,” Quentin sighs, reaching for his crutches where he left them next to the bed. He could fetch his prosthetic and switch but he’s going to lie back down in a minute so he doesn’t bother, just makes his way to the bathroom on his crutches. He’d put his pill dose in its little travel case and the day’s potion vial in the little medicine cabinet there - no big loss if he left them behind because the rest is safely packed, but it’s the routine thing again. If he always has to get his medicine from the same place, it helps to make taking it something he does automatically.

The medicine cabinet has a mirrored door. Quentin very rarely pays attention to stuff like that - as a rule he only really looks at his reflection long enough to make sure he’s not a disaster, because if he looks any longer he starts picking apart literally everything about himself. Just now, he is looking a little more carefully because, yep, that mark on his throat is definitely too high for anything but a turtleneck, and Quentin has always hated turtlenecks. 

(The last time he wore one, he had to, because the Monster had left finger marks bruising dark around his throat.)

But he’s still a little fuzzy in the best of ways just now, so the thought doesn’t hold its usual sting. Instead, Quentin shifts his grip on his crutches, then calls over his shoulder, “Were you making some kind of point here, El?”

“No, I just like marking you up,” is the answer, in a hoarse voice that tells Quentin Eliot is still mostly asleep. 

“Of course you do.” Quentin opens the medicine cabinet to get his meds, but his eye is caught by the way the mirrored door doubles his reflection. He used to love that effect as a kid, he remembers playing with the cabinet door in the upstairs bathroom, moving around to see what angles he could find. 

He looks away to grab his pill case and his potion vial, and when he looks back -

The reflection in the mirror is still him; naked with a hickey bright red just under his jaw, shaggy auburn hair a tousled mess. The reflection bounced back from the door, a little wavery as the door sways slightly, is - 

Wide eyes flaring gold, brown hair still too short and face too thin, expression of sheer terror, a gold-edged ghost in a black hoodie. His mouth opens, a silent cry -  _ help me! _ Quentin thinks he’s saying.  _ Help! _

Quentin stares, then squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, both reflections are him. But he knows he didn’t imagine that. He knows. 

“Quentin? Everything all right?” 

Eliot is standing in the doorway. Quentin looks up and meets worried hazel eyes in the mirror. “No,” he says quietly. “No, I really don’t think it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn! (FYI, I am vocally anti-s5 on Twitter so if that bothers you, stick with Tumblr.)


	7. Every Traveler Please Come Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin and Eliot return to New York, and settle in for one last mission before they can finally retire for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's anything in particular to warn for in this one, but if anyone sees something I should mention, please let me know!
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii for reading my drafts and to my enablers in general.

The sublet Eliot found is the converted first floor of a Brooklyn brownstone - first floor being ideal for both of them, these days. It’s pre-furnished, which Eliot is grateful for when he drops into the living room armchair, Quentin sinking onto the couch. “We need to call someone,” Eliot says flatly. “I don’t know what the fuck you saw last night -” 

“I’m telling you, I saw myself, it was the weirdest fucking thing -” 

“- but we need to get to the bottom of it, and soon,” Eliot finishes. 

“Agreed,” Quentin says, and then sighs. “I have a theory, you know. You’re not gonna like it.”

“I don’t like anything about this and I doubt that’s going to change anytime soon, so out with it,” Eliot says flatly. Quentin makes a face at him, but Eliot only stares back at him. He’s not kidding. This has gone from concerning to downright fucking scary, and he kind of wants to hex someone to kingdom come for it, only there isn’t anyone to hex. 

“OK, so it reminded me a little of the first time I saw Niffin Alice,” Quentin says carefully, drumming his fingers on his good knee. “I didn’t see her regularly at first, it came on gradually. I’ve never asked, but I think that maybe she wasn’t as able to manifest yet. She couldn’t take over my body at first, for sure, so she definitely gained abilities related to us being stuck together over time.”

“So you think you’re being visited by, what, a Niffin you? From where, one of the earlier time loops?” It’s not impossible, especially with magic being so weird, but... Wait. Quentin’s dreams. “No, that’s not what you’re thinking, is it?” 

Quentin shakes his head, looking grim as he stares down at his legs. He’d taken his shoes off, so the foot and ankle of his prosthetic show clearly. “No, I think - I think my dreams were true, just… not for this version of me. Only he didn’t die  _ cleanly _ , that other me. He’s stuck, somehow, maybe in the magic itself. What scares me is, if we help him, does helping mean bringing him back to life or helping him move on?” 

_ No. No fucking way, _ Eliot thinks, stomach lurching. His Quentin might be right here, alive and well, but - but the idea of helping any Quentin to stay dead sounds like a nightmare. He can’t do it, he won’t do it.

_ Even if it’s that or a limbo that might be torture? _ some part of him wants to know.

Hopefully it won’t come to that. “Ideally, helping him means bringing him back to life and then getting him home,” is what he says aloud. “But how the hell is there a version of you who died at the Seam when there’s only forty timelines?” 

Quentin shrugs. “Presumably Jane’s not the only person out there with the power to meddle with time? I know 23 mentioned some kind of misadventure with a horomancer although I wasn’t… really paying much attention at the time. I mean, ever since we found out that the other loops still exist as parallel timelines, I’ve been thinking that’s what horomancy, as a whole, probably does. It makes sense, because otherwise you’d keep making paradoxes, you know?” 

“I hate time magic,” Eliot mutters. “So you think, what, someone else’s time fuckery made another timeline where you also went to the Seam, but died of it?” 

“Maybe? Hell, maybe it was the timeshare spell, who knows?” Quentin says. “But it makes sense.” 

“Nothing about this makes sense.” 

“Well, for a given value of the term.”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “We can’t do this alone,” he sighs. “We barely know where to start. Do we know if - wait. I had two Library books. Do past time loops still have books?” 

Quentin shrugs. “Maybe, but that assumes the Library is outside all parallel timelines and is some kind of neutral space. Which I guess is possible. Or maybe parallel Libraries communicate with each other, which would be kinda on brand for them. Still a place to start, though - I’ll write Alice?”

Eliot nods, and so Quentin digs out the enchanted journal among his sketchbooks and the therapy journal Eliot isn’t allowed to look at, and he scribbles a quick message. Eliot gets up, feeling restless, and finds himself at the kitchen window staring at the rooftop of the house across the alley. 

“El?” 

“While we’re waiting to find out what fresh hell has entered our lives, I’m trying to figure out why there’s a guy in a beekeeper’s outfit on our neighbor’s roof,” Eliot says, hearing the mismatched footsteps of bare foot and plastic foot on linoleum as Quentin crosses over to him. 

“I assume they keep bees, although I didn’t know that was actually legal in the city. Maybe they’ve got a thing for fresh honey?” Quentin’s arm slips around Eliot’s waist and Eliot sighs, wrapping his own arm around Quentin’s shoulders. 

“I keep thinking about what you saw, and what I said,” he admits after a moment. The beekeeper across the way has finished whatever they were doing and goes back inside. “That other you, asking for help, and what you dreamed… and what I said about another me going crazy without you. Because I just -” 

“Hey,” Quentin murmurs, leaning up and probably meaning to press a kiss to Eliot’s cheek, but not quite reaching and getting his jaw instead. “We’re going to be fine. And so are they, this other version of us. We’ll help them be fine, it’ll work out. It always does somehow.” 

“I mean, contrary to that point are thirty-nine times where it apparently did not work out or we wouldn’t exist,” Eliot observes. “And God only knows how many others if your horomancy theory is true. One for sure, because a timeline where you died is somewhere that things  _ emphatically  _ did not work out, even if that was the only change so don’t go trying to argue that one, Coldwater.” 

“I wasn’t,” Quentin says evenly. “I was going to say, maybe you’re right, but this is  _ our  _ timeline, and it’s ours because we keep making shit work out. So we figure this one out, share the luck a little as it were, and then we’re done, remember?” 

“Yeah. Are you really gonna be able to do that?” Eliot asks the question that he’s been trying to ignore since Quentin first suggested retiring. Part of him really doesn’t believe Quentin will be able to go through with it when the time comes. “Because you’ve got to admit, it’s a big change for you.” 

Quentin frowns, tensing, but he doesn’t pull away. “Big changes are kind of a thing for me lately, if you hadn’t noticed,” he points out, very dry. “But that - that’s not the point. Clearly, I’m functional enough on my prosthetic that I could jump back in, to a degree, if I wanted. But it… it’s more than that, and this situation has only made me more certain.” 

“Walk me through that?” Eliot prompts, softly, when Quentin stops talking, apparently lost in thought.

Quentin sighs. “I died. I mean, I know I died, thirty-nine times before all this, plus, you know, the Mosaic and the whole ‘had to make our hearts stop to un-curse the thrones’ deal. But, somewhere, I died, and I  _ remember  _ that. I remember that wherever that actually happened, I never even got to  _ see  _ you again. Not for real, not when we could both see and talk and touch, you know? I only got to see as a ghost, seeing you and all our friends fucking - mourning me. And I can’t - I keep thinking it was too fucking close this time, and that I’m tired of walking the edge like that. So, yeah, I mean it. I can’t swear I’ll never… think I should still be doing more, but I’m committed to backing off and building a life with you, OK? I really am.” 

Quentin’s voice wavers a bit at the end, and he blinks too rapidly. Eliot, his own throat tight with emotion, wraps his arms around him, feeling Quentin relax against his chest. “I mean it, I promise,” Quentin mumbles and Eliot sighs, resting his chin on top of Quentin’s head. 

“OK, all right,” he says. “I’m not complaining, that’s for damn sure. I just - know what you’ve always seemed to want, I was worried.” 

“I don’t want that anymore, playing hero has too high a cost when you don’t live in a story,” Quentin says, voice muffled, and Eliot - believes him. He knows Quentin too well not to hear the sincerity in his voice, and the lingering exhaustion under it. 

Once more into the breach, to save another version of themselves - and it is to save both, because if the other Quentin is lost, so is his Eliot, that’s just a fact - and then they’re done. They can manage that, Eliot thinks. And then, when they’re done, a lifetime of this, the two of them. Another lifetime of it. 

It’s a far better deal than he’d ever hoped for.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin is actually home alone two days later when the doorbell rings. They’ve decided that even though they need to do necessary things like grocery shopping, one of them should be at the apartment at all times in case Alice or Margo or even Julia shows up. 

Quentin has written to Alice and tried praying to Julia - she might only be a demigoddess now but it had seemed worth it to try - while Eliot’s sent messages both via cell phone and by bunny for Margo. They’ve even left word for Kady, who is apparently doing a cross-country thing as she tries to further unite hedge witches. 

Which, more power to her, in Quentin’s opinion. He won’t soon forget that it was hedge witches that made saving Eliot possible, or that the clinic where he’d recovered is run by people who are, if not precisely hedges, certainly independent of the classical system in a lot of ways. It makes him want to root for them, to maybe one day find ways to help - maybe he could teach, one day? The idea has some appeal, but it’s definitely a thought for another time.

As for 23, well, asking him for help feels kind of weird, and apparently he’s teaching baby travelers at Brakebills now? Which, cool, whatever, good for him. They left him a message anyway, though Quentin privately doubts it will come to anything unless they have Julia around to ask him.

The upshot is, all things considered, they’ve decided at least one of them should be home at all times in case one of their messages gets a response. Also, it’s… probably a healthy thing to not always be joined at the hip. So yesterday Quentin met alone with his new physical therapist to discuss his treatment and also stopped on the way home to buy some groceries. Today, Eliot is buying other groceries, because one thing they do not yet have the hang of in modern-day New York is buying food they both like. 

For example, Eliot considers Quentin’s willingness to buy pre-packaged cheese a travesty, even though Quentin points out at least he graduated from Kraft Singles to Sargento. This is part of their larger debate on whether grilled cheese is actually a meal, which has been ongoing if intermittent since Quentin’s third night in the Cottage. Eliot happened to find Quentin making a grilled cheese with lunch meat chicken at three am, and they were off.

(Eliot says no. Quentin says if there’s also meat in it, yes. Margo, having overheard this a few times, just mocked them both without mercy.)

In fact, Quentin is cleaning up after eating grilled cheese for lunch when the doorbell goes. Tossing the rag back in the sink, he goes to answer it, his gait still a little awkward in bare feet. Shoes mute the oddness of the sensing spell on his prosthetic, but when he isn’t wearing them, the strange almost-feeling of it is more noticeable and it makes him tentative. 

It feels sort of like running water over your hands while wearing surgical-type gloves. You can feel the water as clearly as if it were touching bare skin, but there’s no wetness, just the flow of it and the temperature. Now, Quentin can feel that the floor is there, under his prosthetic foot, but there’s no texture of linoleum or wood. Like walking on solid cool nothingness. It’s strange, one more new sensory thing to get used to. He could try socks, but he figures it’s better to just try to get used to it.

He opens the door and all vague musings about the weird factor of his magicked fake leg go right out of his head, because Alice Quinn is on his doorstep. 

“We fucked up. Can I come in?” she says, and Quentin blinks once, twice. That’s quite an entrance.

“Yeah, OK, come on in. Uh, you want coffee? I was just about to make some.” 

“Sure.” Alice glances around. “Where’s Eliot?” 

“Doing his half of the shopping, he should be home soon,” Quentin says, busying himself with the coffeepot so that neither of them really have to dwell on the awkwardness of two exes talking about the whereabouts of one’s live-in partner. “Do you want to wait so you only have to explain once?” 

“Probably a good idea,” Alice sighs, spooning sugar into her coffee. Quentin offers his vanilla creamer but Alice shakes her head - his own taste for that is a recent thing, a leftover from Brian’s tendency for weird multi-flavor concoctions. They both sit in silence at first, drinking their coffee across from each other at the kitchen table. 

And it’s - there had been a time when he would have daydreamed about moments like this in a kitchen that was theirs, and from the way neither of them can meet each other’s eyes he’s guessing Alice is thinking along similar lines. Fuck, he really shot them both in the foot with that stupid,  _ stupid  _ grab-at-a-lifeline attempt to be her boyfriend again, didn’t he? 

“So, um, I like the new haircut,” he says finally, when the silence gets to be too much. It’s not even a lie; Alice cut her hair in a bob that goes just past her chin, and the look suits her. 

Alice smiles a little behind her mug. “I like the red,” she says. 

“Thanks.”

The silence comes back for a moment… and then they both laugh. A little awkward, maybe a little bitter, but still. “God, we’re both useless, aren’t we?” Quentin says, rueful. 

“I mean, you’re kind of an asshole, but we do always end up awkward so some of it is probably both of us.” 

“This is the ‘eventually mad at me’ thing now, huh?” 

Alice shakes her head. “No, I mostly got that out of the way while dealing with a people-eating vine that some idiot Librarian forgot to keep in a secure location. There was a lot of battle magic necessary. It was very therapeutic.” 

Quentin, unsure whether he should be more scared or amused, decides to just nod and say, “Well, I’m glad it was of some use. Also, people-eating vine? Really?” 

Alice rolls her eyes. “You have no idea. It was a mess.” 

They manage to get through twenty minutes that way, with tales of Librarian shenanigans and some of Quentin’s fellow patients at the clinic, and it’s almost like the days before South, before fox magic and desire that was theirs but maybe not  _ entirely  _ theirs. 

Quentin has thought about this and he isn’t sure, but he knows when he went back in time there was something  _ alien  _ in the back of his head. 

Anyway, things now are almost like the days before they complicated things, regardless of the precise catalyst. 

But things are  _ un _ like that too, and Quentin is both relieved and more worried when he hears the front door opening because that means Eliot’s home. Then he feels like this is all entirely too much altogether when he hears Eliot talking - 

\- and Margo answering.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“Eliot?” 

“Margo,” Eliot says, almost dropping one of his bags. He’d left her messages by bunny and cell phone, yet somehow he still hadn’t expected to climb out of his Uber and find her on the sidewalk outside the brownstone where their apartment is. She’s dressed in an all-black and leather outfit that is definitely Fillorian but in New York City still subtle enough to go unnoticed, hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. 

God, he’s missed her. He wants to hug her and yell at her all at once, and he wonders if this is how Quentin felt when Julia teleported into his room at the clinic. 

Still, when she closes the distance between them he sets the bags on the sidewalk and wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on top of her head. “Hi, Bambi. Got my message?” 

“Yeah, I did. Also, I missed you, you jerk. Or, OK, maybe right now we’re both jerks,” Margo says into his chest. “Point is, I missed you, El. And I could really use your help on this one.” 

Eliot, avoiding that for the moment, says, “I missed you too. What’s happened?” And, OK, maybe they shouldn’t be talking about this on the sidewalk in Brooklyn, but this is New York City. Perhaps not quite as full of TV and movie people who could just be working through script ideas as Los Angeles (or so Margo told him once, being from there), but more than enough if you add in the theater and would-be novelist crowds. 

Muggles usually just assume something that fits in their worldview if they come across a bit of magical detail, after all.

Margo sighs, and they settle on the porch, her fingers flicking out in a cool spell on Eliot’s bags. He appreciates that as they lean against the rail. 

“It’s gone all time-fucked,” she tells him. “I went back to Whitespire and it was under the rule of some ‘Dark King’, three hundred fucking years after I left. But then I find out, you go like thirty, forty miles in any direction from the castle, you vanish. At least, that’s what this guy was telling me, the one who explained about the Dark King. The story is that he overthrew Fen and she fled with Josh -” 

“What happened to Fen?” Eliot cuts in, alarmed. 

“Getting to that. Anyway, this guy Kieran - and he looked weirdly familiar, he’s a tinker, I don’t know what it was, but he reminded me of someone - he’s the one who took me to the border no one crosses. Reason for that is, you cross it, you’re in a different fucking timezone. As in, time period, not Eastern Standard versus Central. I found Fen and Josh in a section near the border with Loria, it’d been about five months from their perspective when I got there. They’ve got a local mage with them whose specialty is time magic, she’s got me set up so when I go back it’s to wherever they are.” 

Margo sighs. “But Fillory’s all over the damn place, El. There’s another part that thinks the Chatwins are still ruling in Whitespire, Kieran decided to join up with the resistance and he says the weird outsiders he’s descended from are back at the old family cottage in the middle of nowhere. He tried to go back to check for something, didn’t say what. Just came back and said something about things no one should ever see even about long-dead ancestors, so I’m thinking they’re kinda kinky, whoever they are.”

Eliot - consciously decides not to think too hard about that little tidbit, and about the possibility that he knows  _ exactly  _ who this Kieran’s ancestors are. Anyway, that doesn’t exactly matter because if he’s right, he knows that little detail won’t come into this. He and Quentin would certainly remember, even if some things are hazy. Much more important is the general fact that Fillory has split into time-fucked segments. 

“What is with the fucking time magic?” he mutters.

“There’s more?” Margo asks. 

“Oh God, yeah, but let’s hold that thought till we’re inside, we can fill Q in.” 

Or, rather, they can fill in Quentin and Alice Quinn, because the two of them are sitting in the kitchen with half-finished cups of coffee. Quentin’s choices, bought online before they got here - the deal was Quentin could pick the coffee mugs and Eliot has rights to everything else in the kitchen - so that means Alice has one with the Game of Thrones wolf on it and Quentin’s has what is apparently a map of Middle-Earth. 

The absurdity of that little detail helps, Eliot decides, especially when Margo smirks at her Slytherin mug and his own Star Wars one. Eliot takes the chair next to Quentin and rests his free hand on Quentin’s bad knee. Which is a habit he’s trying to get into generally to remind Quentin that the prosthetic doesn’t bother him, it’s not possessiveness. 

Except maybe it is this time, a little, and from the flashing blue eyes and the mostly-fond exasperation in brown eyes, both Alice and Quentin know it. Margo hops up on their counter instead of taking the last chair, which makes Quentin grin at her. 

Awkwardly, because they have their own shit to sort, Eliot knows, but it’s a start. 

Margo repeats her story for Quentin and Alice’s benefit, and when she talks about Kieran Eliot feels Quentin tense up, just a little. Of course, he had the same thought Eliot did. When it’s over, Alice says, “I think all of this is connected to my problem, but Quentin, what’s going on with you first? You said something about a second you in your note?” 

And so Quentin explains about his dreams, and the vision in the mirror. Under the table, his hand finds Eliot’s and Eliot holds on tight. It doesn’t get any easier to hear about this, to think about a Quentin trapped somewhere even if it’s not his Q. It could have been, so easily, and it is far too easy to imagine how that other Eliot must feel right now wherever  _ he  _ is. And from the way Quentin’s grip is as tight as his own, it’s clear he’s thinking along similar lines.

“Holy fuck,” Margo mutters when Quentin finishes. Alice takes off her glasses, rubbing at her eyes. She looks tired, and all the more so when she lowers her hand. 

“I was right. Your problem - and probably Margo’s too, though maybe less directly - are definitely related to why I’m here.” 

“When I answered the door, you said we fucked up,” Quentin says, rubbing his thumb over Eliot’s knuckles. “What did you mean by that? The timeshare spell?”

Alice nods. “I did tell you there were risks. Honestly, we’re not sure of the full extent of the damage. There may be a Timeline 41 out there, branched off that altered series of events at Brakebills South but if there is, we’re as unaware of it on a regular basis as we are Timelines 1 to 39. That’s not the problem. The problem is this timeline split, at the Seam.” 

“How?” Eliot asks. 

Alice shakes her head. “We’re not entirely sure. The lingering residue of the timeshare spell on Quentin probably had something to do with it, plus Everett had God only knows how many kinds of magic in him, and who knows what the Seam itself may have had to do with it in the middle of a storm of backfiring magic. But the two realities are bleeding into each other. We need to fix it.” 

“By what, merging them back together?” Margo asks. “What would that do to the different things that have happened since? Q living or not, for one obvious example.”

“No, it’s too late now. What we need to do is figure out how to detangle the two realities and then they’ll continue on parallel paths. Whatever happened definitely started at the Seam, though - there’s a direct line to what we’re calling Timeline 40b at the Library. It’s the mirror Everett used to enter the Mirror Realm, it’s turned into a portal on both sides.” 

“Son of a bitch,” Quentin says. “So what about the ghost me with the gold eyes?”

“I’m not sure,” Alice admits. “Best guess is, he died and you didn’t, but something about the nature of the split meant he couldn’t really pass on. Either because he was still connected to you, or…” 

“Wait,” Eliot says, thinking of gold eyes and golden sparks, Quentin’s comparison of his ghost self to Niffin Alice, and magic twisting. “Quentin said this ghost reminded him a little of your earliest Niffin manifestations. And then there’s Q’s new abilities with magic. Q and I were talking about this possibility earlier - could this ghost Q be  _ in  _ the magic somehow, like a Niffin?”

“Well, if he is, let’s hope there’s not a pair of Everetts there with him or we might have even more problems,” Alice says. “But that definitely seems possible.”

“How does this explain Fillory?” Margo demands. 

“It seems likely that someone did something in the other Fillory that backlashed not on them, but on you,” Alice says. 

“Well, I’m gonna have to kick their asses.” 

“It could be 40b you,” Quentin points out, and Margo shrugs. 

“I will kick my own ass if I have to.”

“No surprise there,” Eliot says, mostly fond, but also… Margo looks over at him sharply, and it’s like they’ve both remembered they didn’t leave things on the best of terms. 

Quentin clears his throat. “Hey, so, there’s a Chinese place around the corner, why don’t Alice and I go pick up food for us all, and then we can keep conferencing?” 

Under other circumstances, Eliot might worry about Quentin wanting to go off with Alice, except that he’s just so blatantly transparent in the way he’s looking between Margo and Eliot himself - it’s obviously a ploy to give them time alone. And Alice seems to agree, though she makes a quick face. 

Margo is clearly no more fooled than Eliot, but they figure out what they want and send their one-time firsties on their way. Then it’s just the two of them, and Eliot hasn’t got a fucking clue what to say. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“You know you didn’t fool them at all, right?” Alice says the moment that the front door shuts. Quentin shrugs, shifting his grip on his cane. He’s wrapped a bit of blue cloth around the handle to make it easier on his hand. He’s still not quite secure enough to walk any distances without it yet - the remaining muscles in his left leg still need some strengthening, though his right leg is of course stronger than it’s ever been. His arms too. 

“Fooling them wasn’t really the point. Letting them have some space to hash shit out was the point. I think I’ll have to talk to Margo too, but it’s more important for her and Eliot to settle things than me and her.” 

“And it won’t get you awkward questions later, going off with me?” Alice asks, an edge in her voice that Quentin can’t quite interpret. 

“No,” he finally says. “Alice, I -” 

“I know. I know why you thought you should try again with me, and I get that whatever reasons made you think your being blatantly in love with Eliot didn’t matter are probably all related to things between the two of you, and so not really my business. But it - I don’t think I knew it would still sting. It shouldn’t, but it does.” 

Quentin says nothing as they turn down the block. He isn’t even sure what to say.  _ I’m sorry _ feels inadequate and also not entirely correct - he  _ is  _ sorry that he’s apparently still hurting Alice and for trying to get back with her when he shouldn’t have, but he doesn’t regret Eliot for a second. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he finally admits, deciding that maybe honesty is the only choice left for them even if it ends up causing more pain. 

“I’m dating again. Other Librarians mostly, no one serious enough to be exclusive, but I’m… giving casual dating a try since I never did before,” Alice says, voice clipped, and he can tell she wants to walk at a pace to match her voice but she’s deliberately moving slower for his sake. Even under the circumstances. 

Quentin thinks of the first-year girl he’d so briefly been with again, back at South, of the girl he’d tried so hard to save. He thinks of Alice’s face at the Seam, in his actual memories and the ones that belong to a gold-eyed ghost. And - 

“I’m happy for you, if you’re happy,” he says cautiously, not sure what else to say. Maybe he should say that news stings him a little - but the thing is that it doesn’t, not really. There is, will always be, a part of him that regrets he couldn’t be what she needed, even knowing that lack to be mutual, but that isn’t the same thing.

“I’m not, not yet. But I think I’m getting there. Casual has an odd definition given how old some of my new colleagues are, but it’s certainly more interesting than trying to date in undergrad ever was,” Alice says, pausing and turning to look at him. “And you are there, aren’t you? Even with this new disaster?” 

“Yeah,” Quentin says softly. “I am.” It’s almost dizzying to say, and some of that isn’t even for him, because one of the things he and Alice had bonded over in the first place was a shared sense of unhappiness. He wants her to be happy too, he really truly does.

They fall into a silence that’s not quite comfortable but less fraught, at least, as they keep walking. Then, halfway to the Chinese place, Quentin catches sight of his reflection in an empty storefront’s glass - and there are two of him. “Oh shit,” he says, and grabs Alice’s wrist without thinking. When Alice looks over, her eyes widen. 

“You didn’t mention his eyes were gold.” 

“You can see him too?” Quentin says, because to him it’s like a transparency overlay - he can see himself in his light green buttondown and faded blue jeans, his hair longer although the color isn’t clear in this somewhat dim reflection, but on top of himself as he is, he sees another him with all-black clothes and too-short hair, golden eyes as wide as last time, but shocked more than scared now. 

“Let go of my wrist,” Alice suggests, and Quentin does. “Can’t see him anymore,” she says, and Quentin reaches for her hand this time. Alice takes it, then looks at the window again. 

The Quentin in the glass narrows his eyes at them - and then in a flicker of gold he’s gone. Alice lets go, and Quentin realizes as the flavor fades that her magic tastes like tart lemonade. He thinks about telling her, but decides not to.

“Well, now we know something we didn’t know before,” Alice says. “You are definitely directly linked to him, and physical contact with you lets other people at least see him, maybe more. I have no idea what that means, except that I think I need to bring some of the people I’ve been working with in on this.” 

Quentin normally wouldn’t be too thrilled about the idea of accepting help from Librarians who aren’t Alice (Zelda is acceptable if absolutely necessary but Quentin  _ hates  _ knowing she’s read his book). But at the moment he’s willing to take any help on offer. 

He looks back once more as they keep walking and he thinks he sees a flash of gold in the glass.  _ I want to go home, _ whispers a voice in his head that is his but not his, and Quentin has a terrible moment of being impossibly, horrifically lonely. 

God, what an awful thing to die for.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“So, they’re not subtle in the least,” Margo says once the door closes behind Quentin and Alice, falsely cheerful.

“Pretty sure Q wasn’t bothering to try to be, honestly,” Eliot says, leaning back in his chair. 

“It doesn’t worry you, them going off together?” 

“No. It doesn’t.” It might have once, and they both know it, but those days are over.

Silence falls, and then Margo sighs. “Look, El. I really did think I was helping you both. I get that I fucked up, but don’t I get any credit for that?” 

Eliot fiddles with his coffee cup. “I don’t even know what to say to that, Margo. I - fuck, I’m not even sure where to start with most of this shit. I just - it starts before all that, but let’s start with that. What the hell made you think it was a good idea for me to think Q was inpatient again, that the Monster had hurt him that much?” 

Margo winces. “Well, first of all, if I’d realized that was what you thought, I’d have cleared shit up right away. I probably should have guessed and I didn’t, my bad there. But I was worried, all right? You - damn it, El, they wouldn’t even wake you up, and then when they did you caught a fever and you almost died, I… I know how you are with him, I didn’t want you to push it -” 

“You could have told me that,” Eliot points out.

“Would you have listened?” 

“I don’t know but that’s not the point.” 

“Eliot, the second you found out, you took off to San Diego! I think that proves my point,” Margo snaps, throwing up her hands, and Eliot scowls. 

“Yeah, because by then Quentin had been out there alone for weeks,” Eliot retorts. Then he sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Look, when I was first discharged, yeah, I was in no state to go down the block for coffee, much less run off to San Diego. But I needed to know what was actually going on. I didn’t need to be protected, I needed -” 

“I thought you were dead!” Margo yells. “That -  _ thing _ , looked at me with your eyes and asked me to help it act like you because it wanted us to be its friends, and there was nothing left of you! I thought you were dead and it was like half the fucking light in the world was just - gone, El. So when I got Quentin’s messages, when I knew I could get you back… I gave up my crown for that, I would have given up anything or anyone if it meant saving you, and maybe I was a little overprotective for a while, but can you fucking blame me?” 

There are things Eliot could say here, things about Margo hiding in Fillory and leaving Quentin to deal with the Monster. Things he wants to say, actually, only they aren’t really his to say. So he bites them back. “I know, Margo. Believe me, I would have been the same in your shoes but I  _ did not need _ to be protected. I needed to know that the people I love best were all right, I needed to be able to talk to you both.”

Margo sighs. “I thought I was helping you both. Especially since I… didn’t totally - look, I blamed myself too, I gave you the gun. But there was part of me that kept thinking, if Q never made that fucking deal with the guard… And I knew it was shitty and he’d just lost his fucking leg so I knew he had enough to deal with even if I did miss shit. So I didn’t want to spill that all over him but I didn’t trust myself not to.”

Eliot stares at her, too startled, honestly, to be angry. “I’d do it again,” he says. “Shooting that thing. I’d do it again.” 

“I know that, and that fucking pisses me off too.” Margo huffs, getting up and stalking around the living room, restless. Margo the Destroyer, Eliot thinks with a strangely bittersweet fondness. “I couldn’t do anything,” she finally says, voice low and pained. “That thing stole you from us and it was fixated on Quentin and I couldn’t help you, I didn’t know how to help him. But I could get Fillory back on track, I could keep our kingdom going. So after all the fuckery to get me back there, I stayed there because it was something I could do. Something I could bury myself in.”

And isn’t that kind of mentality exactly the thing that sent Eliot to Fillory in the first damn place? 

But Margo isn’t done. “And now Fillory’s more fucked than ever, and I told you - well, not you, trippy lizard you, I said that the one thing I ever did right was be your best friend, and now I - did I fuck that up too, El? Because you’ve barely talked to me since you went to San Diego, our longest conversation turned into a fight because I wanted you to come to Fillory with me…” 

“No,” Eliot says, getting up and crossing over to Margo. He pulls her into a hug just like he did on the sidewalk, holding on tight. “No more than I fucked up over the years. We’re OK, Bambi, we’re always OK, just - not again, all right?” 

Margo nods, tucking her head in under Eliot’s chin. “So you two sorted your shit and are a full-on package deal now, huh?” she asks after a moment. 

“Yeah, we did.” 

“There’s a bigger story there, I’ll bet. The way he was looking at you in the hospital that day…”

“There’s a very long story there, actually.” 

Margo leans back a little, studying his face. Eliot tries not to squirm under those too-sharp eyes. “Will you tell me?” 

He lets her go, only enough to lead her over to the couch. “So, you remember the quest you stopped us from going on by digging up a couple graves and talking to Jane Chatwin?” 

“Yeah… No. Don’t tell me you somehow remember that?” Margo leans forward, fascinated. “That’s fucking crazy, El.”

Eliot smiles. “You got it,” he says, and then he tells her. An abridged version, because they only have so much time before Quentin and Alice get back. But it feels like a fresh start, telling her. It feels like saying,  _ this is me, this is me and him, it’s the part you didn’t know and it matters so now you know. _ It feels like asking and giving forgiveness all at once for secrets kept. 

Maybe that’s what they needed.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


They do keep conferencing over the Chinese food, just as Quentin said, even if it was an excuse to give Eliot and Margo some space. At least that worked, he thinks, watching them once they relocate back to the living room, leaning together on the couch almost like old times. 

“I mean, this is a good thing, right? That other people can see Casper Q as long as they’re holding our Q’s hand or something?” Margo points out, poking Quentin’s good thigh with her toe. He’s sitting perched on the couch arm - mostly to demonstrate that he can, because he’s seen both Alice and Margo sneaking glances at his fake foot ever since he took his shoes back off.

“Casper Q?” Quentin echoes, deadpan. Maybe he should be insulted by it, thinking of his other self, but Margo’s wisecracks are comforting, in their way. “Does that make me Wendy Q?” 

Margo snorts. “I don’t think you can pull off the red getup, sorry. I mean, it would clash with your current hair, and I couldn’t let El be seen with you then.” 

“If we’re waiting for my style to improve we’re doomed,” Quentin mutters. “Anyway,” he adds in a more normal tone, “you’re right, it could be useful, except he doesn’t seem able to stick around very long.” 

“That could just be the newness of it,” Alice says, a distant look in her eyes. “Manifesting gets easier over time. You were right about that, Q. Of course, he may not know that, and it might also be different for him than it was for me - we don’t know if he’s physically closer to a ghost or a Niffin or something else entirely so we can’t assume he’ll be able to manifest more effectively at all. Which is why we need at least one psychic - I’m not sure 23’s skill set will help here, but I’ve been working with a few people at the Library who I think have some ideas that might help.” 

“Like what?” Margo asks, and Alice shrugs. 

“Hypnosis, lucid dreaming -”

“Uh, hang on,” Eliot says, holding up a hand. “I know we call Penny’s mind stuff inception, but this is getting a little too much like that movie for comfort. What good is lucid dreaming?”

Alice fiddles with her glasses. “I had the idea that maybe Quentin could contact his other self in a dream, since he’s also been dreaming… Casper Q’s memories. Like I said, hypnosis is an option, though that comes with the risk of Q’s other self maybe possessing him.” 

“That’d be weird,” Quentin sighs, rubbing his forehead. “Let’s not do that last one if we can avoid it. I think… OK, so, back in first year, before I really got that far into classes and didn’t have time for much else, I was trying to figure out how to shut my head up so Penny would quit bitching about it. Didn’t get very far, but I came across something called telepathic tracking, any clue what that is?” 

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Margo says. When they look at her, she shrugs. “Had to do an end of semester essay on it and there was no getting out of that class by… other means. Shit sticks sometimes. It’s this thing where psychics can use the mental imprint of someone to find them, or find when another psychic’s been fucking around in someone’s head. It wouldn’t apply here in the usual way, but…” 

“Twist the spell some, might get somewhere,” Eliot says. “Where’s our meta-comp hedge when you need her?” 

“Studying with a goddess and out of contact,” Quentin sighs. “So basically we have too many options and we need someone to help us narrow them down. 23 has yet to respond to any of our messages, so for now I guess we have to assume he’s not an option, right? What about the Tesla Flexion?” 

“Last resort option,” Alice says. “Also I don’t think it would work, at least not for this. The other you is almost certainly lacking a body, and the rest of our counterparts may or may not know anything. The mirror Zelda has is safer, I know her counterpart wants to bring the… other me in on all this. I actually have an appointment for just that tomorrow.” 

“I’m gonna go with you,” Margo announces. At the three surprised looks she gets, she shrugs. “I figure they have the best chance of knowing what’s going on with Fillory, and what happened in the  _ other  _ Fillory to fuck up ours.”

It makes sense, so they don’t argue with her. And then there really isn’t much left for them to discuss. Alice declines to stay, muttering something about having already gotten a hotel room, but Margo drops her purse - actually a Hermione-purse, which Quentin gets a kick out of - in the guest room and comes back out in leggings and an overlong sweater, her hair down, curling up in the armchair. Quentin settles with Eliot on the couch and they put on a movie because none of them really want to think too hard. 

Normally it’s Quentin who dozes off at times like this, but tonight it’s Eliot, tipping sideways until he’s stretched out full-length on the couch, his head in Quentin’s lap. Quentin moves him long enough to put a pillow there, getting a sleepy swat on his arm for the trouble. But then they’re both settled, Quentin absently playing with Eliot’s hair while he sleeps. 

“Bit of a role reversal, huh?” Margo says quietly, and Quentin glances over. The movie’s over, the credits playing but muted. 

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, guess so, but it was his turn for a rough night last night so I’m not surprised. It’s like we trade off nightmares, or it would be only sometimes it’s both of us.” He leans his head against the back of the couch, eyeing her in the dim light. “Are you going to ask him to come back to Fillory again?” 

“I’d ask you both, but I’m pretty sure I know the answer,” Margo says. “Look, Q…”

Quentin waits, then when Margo doesn’t continue, asks, “Were you trying to get rid of me?” 

Margo makes a face. “Yes and no? I - look. I really did think it was the right thing for you, you’re my friend, I wanted you to get better. But I also kind of wanted to kick your ass for making that stupid deal to be the new guard and setting everything off in the first place. No more than I wanted to kick my own ass for giving El the gun, but… I didn’t want to dump it on you, because I knew it was bullshit, so… Yeah. I shooed you off so I wouldn’t.”

Maybe he should be angry, maybe he should only not be yelling because Eliot is sleeping on him. But the truth is Quentin isn’t angry. He’s almost relieved, actually. Because he wasn’t imagining it, but also - “You said you wanted to. Past tense?” 

Margo shrugs a shoulder, tossing back her hair. “I’ll always want to kick both our asses a little, but the truth is - I saw how you looked at him in the hospital, and I know how I felt, and I can’t be too mad at either of us anymore. And I missed you too, Coldwater - you know you scared the shit out of us almost as much as El did, right?” 

Quentin shakes his head because no, he had not actually known that. 

“Yeah, well, you did. I was there with Wicker and Quinn, the next day - your heart stopped. They got you back but for a minute there we thought… and you know I get angry when I’m scared, so that didn’t help. But now… you’re my boys. Both of you, and I feel like I forgot that somehow.” 

“We’re retiring,” Quentin says after a moment. “Like, from the crisis shit, after this. We can’t sit out now for obvious reasons, but after this…” 

Margo turns off the TV and gets up, catching Quentin by surprise when she ruffles his hair affectionately. He could pull away from the touch but he leans in instead, because he’s missed her too. Her magic tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream. 

“I get it,” she says quietly. “We’ll talk later, all three of us maybe?” 

“Sounds like a plan,” Quentin says with a smile. 

“Don’t stay out here all night, your neck will hate you.”

She’s right, but Quentin likes it, sitting here in the dimness, Eliot’s head on his lap, and so he closes his eyes with his head tipped back. He drifts, for a while, halfway to sleeping, not rousing until someone shakes his arm. “Hmm?” 

“Both our bodies will hate us if we spend all night out here,” Eliot says as Quentin squints at him. “Why’d you let me sleep anyway?” 

“You needed it,” Quentin says around a yawn of his own. “Bed?” 

“Yeah, think so.” 

But Quentin can’t sleep even when they’re curled together in their bed, warm under the blankets, the taste of sweet spices on his tongue because Eliot’s pressed up behind him, hand resting lightly on Quentin’s stomach under his sleep shirt. Usually playing the little spoon is one of Quentin’s favorite ways to fall asleep, but tonight he stares at the wall for what feels like hours. He feels… hollow, somehow, that awful flash of terrible loneliness lingering in his head and heart even though he’s as far from lonely as he’s ever been.

He knows this feeling isn’t really him. But he recognizes it even so, has felt very nearly the same not so long ago. His fingers brush over Eliot’s hand on his stomach and he remembers holding that hand in a cold hospital room, thinking that the words he spoke into the silence might be the last he ever said to Eliot. 

Eliot’s hand shifts under his, tangling their fingers together. Shit, Quentin didn’t mean to wake him up.

“I can hear you thinking,” Eliot says in Quentin’s ear, his voice a sleepy rumble. 

“Sorry,” Quentin whispers back. “Go back to sleep.” It’s a useless direction and he knows it, but it’s worth trying. When Eliot doesn’t respond, the silence more pointed than any question could be, Quentin sighs, rolling over in Eliot’s arms so they’re facing each other. Eliot goes for blackout curtains so they can’t see each other, but it’s the same idea. Quentin sighs, tipping his head forward to rest against Eliot’s collarbone. “I got a blast of emotion, when I saw Casper in the window.” 

“Shit. I can’t imagine that was a good feeling,” Eliot murmurs, his arms tightening just a little. 

“Not even a little bit. I - it felt like - did I ever thank you? For, for coming after me, to San Diego?”

Silence in the darkness for a moment, except for their breathing, and then - the slide of fingers in a tut, and a soft amber light is hovering over their heads. Quentin first saw Eliot cast this at 2 a.m. in the Cottage on a night neither of them could sleep, Eliot taught him how and then they made mutlicolored lights that danced and chased each other over their heads until morning.

But this color was the nightlight version of the spell they always did for Teddy. By the familiar warm light, Quentin blinks and sees Eliot looking at him with a confused frown, very awake now. “I wasn’t aware you had to thank me for doing the thing I was obviously going to do,” he says, an edge in his voice like he knows he shouldn’t be insulted but almost is anyway.

“No, but - I never told you - I came to see you, before I left. I sat there and talked to you even though you couldn’t hear me and. I thought it might be the last I ever saw you, I thought everyone wanted me gone and I wouldn’t let myself cry because I thought it was stupid to cry. And I - it felt like that, I think he must feel like that all the time and it’s so  _ much _ , El. So, yeah, I kinda do need to thank you because deep down, all that lonely, that’s how I felt till I saw you in the hallway that day.”

Eliot’s hand comes up to cup his cheek and Quentin sighs, leans into it. His eyes slip shut instinctively, so it’s almost a surprise when Eliot kisses him, soft and careful. “You don’t need to thank me,” Eliot murmurs, drawing back only just enough to speak so that they’re still breathing the same air. Quentin’s eyes open, and Eliot’s eyes look even more amber-gold than usual in this light, the green flecks all but invisible. “You are not alone here, I said that and I meant it, even then - not like I mean it now, but even so. I always meant it, with you. Neither of us are alone, now.” 

“I know,” Quentin sighs. But somewhere out there some version of him is alone, more alone than a living person can ever be - and some version of Eliot isn’t much better off - and there’s a quiet creeping horror in knowing that. 

But they’re going to fix it. And here and now, tonight, he’s safe with the man he loves, and there’s nothing trying to break them. Everything that has tried has failed.  _ There’s gotta be some power in that, _ Quentin told a dead garden, talking about his childish dreams of Fillory and thinking of a cottage in the woods where an unlikely family built a life. But he knows better now. There is power in a dream and he respects that, but there’s so much more in  _ life  _ that’s like this, in being hurt but healing, cracked but not broken, and together above all.

So Quentin takes a deep breath and flicks his fingers up at the ceiling, a bright blue spark of light flying from his fingertips to spin around Eliot’s amber light. Eliot jumps, and then laughs, sending a purple one up to join them. 

And so they lay awake for a while, shifting so they’re both on their backs and holding hands, their free hands casting light after light until in the darkness of their room they have a rainbow sky of stars. Eventually Quentin does manage to fall asleep under them, drifting away under their personal impossible night sky. 

For the first time in weeks - probably the last time for a while - Quentin’s dreams are all his, and none of them are nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, the beekeeping neighbor is not a reference to the time bee thing in s5, it's actually a stealth crossover with my favorite TV show. If you recognize it, let me know! :)
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn! (FYI, I am vocally anti-s5 on Twitter so if that bothers you, stick with Tumblr.)

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am giving Quentin the novels that are my Fillory as a new comfort object, I have no regrets at all.
> 
> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at Fae_Boleyn!


End file.
